PANJIM: Major cracks have developed on the Miramar-Dona Paula concrete road that is still under construction. Herald inspected the stretch from Miramar to Caranzalem – nearly 3 kms long – which is complete on one side and noticed major cracks at 15 places.
From Miramar circle to Science Center there are four cracks and from Science Center to Caranzalem there are almost 11 major cracks, which can be clearly seen. Some of the gaps are almost an inch wide leading to questions on the quality of the under-construction concrete road.
Light vehicular movement recently commenced on the road with restricted entry from one end and the cracks have raised an alarm over the quality of the work undertaken by Venkata Rao Infrastructure company. The Rs 72 crore contract was allotted to the company by Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation (GSIDC).
“I will not comment as I have not seen the cracks developed on the under-construction concrete road. What are cracks for you may be not cracks for me, so I will not comment further before checking,” GSIDC managing director Sanjit Rodrigues told Herald.
It is, however, difficult to believe that neither GSIDC nor the contractor are aware of the cracks as some tar like substance has been pushed into the gaps. Prasad Rao, contractor for the work, said this is a regular phenomenon and the cracks will be filled by polysulphide.
The concretization work was allotted to the Venkata Rao in February 2014 and is to completed by the end of this year, but till date only 35% of the work has been completed.
The road’s concretization has been embroiled in controversy since being haphazardly tendered by GSIDC despite opposition from the then ruling panel of the Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP). A Public Interest Litigation had also been filed by Advocate Aires Rodrigues and digging was stopped on directions from the High Court.
Former Panjim Mayor Surendra Furtado demanded that a thorough investigation be conducted into the tendering and quality of the work as the cracks are a sign of poor quality work.
Advocate Aires Rodrigues who has been following the matter said, “Louis Berger case is nothing compared to the Miramar-Dona Paula road concretization fraud, which has been the biggest scandal by the Manohar Parrikar government in taking the people of Panjim for a ride by excavating a newly tarred road.”
Cuncolim failure didn’t stop government
A portion of the Miramar-Dona Paula road was dug at the end of 2013 for laying a sewage line right in the middle of the road. After completion of the sewage pipeline laying the road was hot-mixed in January 2014 at the cost of Rs 1.3 crore .
On April 2, 2014 GSIDC MD Sanjit Rodrigues, who was also holding charge of CCP commissioner, issued a NOC to himself as MD of GSIDC to take up the concretization of the same road. The CCP was not taken into confidence and not consulted by CCP commissioner.
Despite Rs 1.3 crore being spent on hot-mixing of the road just three months earlier, GSIDC again dug up the road to concretize it.
Government in the past had experimented with concretizing a portion of a road in Cuncolim by spending Rs 5 crore. That road too had developed huge cracks much like those developed on the Miramar-Dona Paula road. The government had removed the concrete at Cuncolim and again hot-mixed the road.
Despite the failure of the concrete road experiment, GSIDC took up similar work in Panjim.