Team Herald

MARGAO: Guirdolim panchayat will have an extraordinary gram sabha on August 20 to take the people’s final opinion on the proposed railway underpass across the South Western Railway level crossing near the station.

MLA Clafasio Dias along with MLA Nilesh Cabral came to the site with engineers and officials of the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation, Public Works Department, South Western Railway and Rail Vikas Nigam Limited.

All the engineers ruled out the possibility of constructing a rail over bridge at the site due to various reasons. On one side of the level crossing there is a three road junction which will not be maintainable if the rail over bridge is constructed.

Secondly the roads on either side are too narrow to construct a proper rail over bridge and thirdly sufficient distance to give a proper gradient to road from the height of the bridge was not available. 

The engineer proposed a rail under pass with a height of 2.2 mts besides the 1 mt thick slab below the railway track to protect the under pass. However, panch Sonia Fernandes objected to and argued that the people of the village should discuss this matter at a special gram sabha.

Deputy Sarpanch Franky Rodrigues also surprised everybody by objecting to the under pass. He had two objections – one that the engineers had said the underpass would be waterlogged for four months and the second that as life improves people will purchase better cars which may not be able to use the underpass in future.

“Personally, I feel we should engage independent consultants as the GSIDC engineers will nudge the project towards what the government wants as they are government employees,” he said.

However, what the engineers had said that if the underpass had to go below the 3.2 mts depth then there was a risk of it getting waterlogged as has happened in other parts of the State.

Nilesh Cabral personally assured some of villagers saying, “I take the responsibility of getting the Collector to issue a NOC stating that work on the underpass will be undertaken once the over bridge is completed.”

 he said. He also promised to get the government to address a letter to the South Western Railways agreeing to bear 50 % of the cost of constructing the underpass.

Some villagers raised questions of ambulances not being able to use the underpass but their fears were allayed by pointing out that the ambulance could come from Curtorim and need not cross the tracks.

While five of the seven panchas of Guirdolim village panchayat including the Sarpanch Malisha Carvalho and Deputy Sarpanch Franky were present at the discussions, only two panchas from Chandor Cavorim including the Deputy Sarpanch Mafaldina Martins were present.

As the discussion remained inconclusive with some people agreeing to the underpass and some disagreeing, it was decided to call for an extraordinary gram sabha meeting on August 20 to finalise the matter.