Team Herald
MARGAO: Taking its agitation against the bad roads in Margao to a different level, the Shadow Council for Margao (SCM) on Thursday pasted posters on the road cautioning motorists of potholes.
SCM pasted posters on the road cautioning the users about the deplorable condition of the roads in the town. The posters with a picture of “Yamraj”, sarcastically had a message that “Yamraj is in Margao at the invitation of the authorities who don’t care”.
SCM convener Savio Coutinho said they have been consistently raising the issue of bad roads, which was a result of substandard work. Despite the fact that the said work is under the Defect Liability Period, the PWD seems to be trembling to take appropriate action against the erring contractor, while the citizens continue to suffer.
The SCM said due to the continuous execution of substandard works and the subsequent washing away/resurfacing of Margao’s roads, the road level has become higher than the adjoining footpaths thereby putting the lives of pedestrians at risk.
“Apart from the restoration of the roads, our main aim is to ensure that the PWD doesn’t spend additional funds for the rectification of substandard work from the public exchequer,” Coutinho said and added that when the SCM had gheraoed the PWD engineer on Tuesday, the official could not satisfy the delegation on the action initiated against the contractor for executing substandard work.
“We have serious doubts about the whole matter and suspect a serious scam in this work , because of which the department is not initiating action against the contractor”, Coutinho alleged.
“The continuous excuses of the PWD of the rains hampering the restoration works is not acceptable to the public as very recently there was a dry spell of nearly 15 days and the department didn’t find it fit to get the restoration works done then”, Coutinho added.
Radha Kavlekar, Laurel Abranches, Sameer Gaonkar, Orlando Pacheco Eduardo Lourenco, Agnelo Baretto, Hercules Vaz, Atul Panandikar, Felix Dias, Hanif Kazi and Rauf Shaik present.
