The warning that has gone out from Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant to the officials of the Public Works Department is that if the potholes on the roads are not filled within 30 days they will be punished. The word used was ‘punished’, normally governments do not talk of punishments for public servants but of taking action against defaulting officials, a term that has a very different connotation and is less harsh than punishment. The Chief Minister presumably believes this is a serious enough problem that merits punishment. So, since the Chief Minister has spoken of punishment at a public forum, will it spur the officials of the Public Works Department to act forthwith?
Yet, just days before the Chief Minister made this assurance, the Public Works Minister Deepak Pauskar under whose department roads come, had said that people zoom in to photograph potholes making them look bigger than they actually are. This was nothing other than a weak excuse that displays the indifference the minister and the department have for the condition of the roads in the State and the suffering of the people who have to drive over them. It is the duty of this department to ensure that the roads are motorable. A minister who is serious about his department would not make such an excuse, as this is not what a person in authority would do.
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This, however, is not the first time that a deadline has been placed for filling up the potholes. The same Minister for Public Works had weeks ago assured the people that the potholes would be filled before Ganesh Chaturthi, this obviously hasn’t been done and it’s almost a month since the festival. The 30-day deadline that has now been given to the Public Works Department officials coincides with Diwali, indicating that the roads will be ready before the festival. But will they get repaired? Against the background of a department that has displayed a lethargic attitude where potholes are concerned, this is going to turn into a game of wait and watch.
This is also not the first time that a Chief Minister has had to intervene in the matter of potholes on the roads and their repairs. In July 2018, then Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar had in a meeting with then PWD Minister Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavalikar and officials of the Public Works Department discussed an action plan for the removal of potholes and other hindrances. Following the meeting, executive engineers of the PWD had been instructed to visit their designated areas to check the condition of the roads for subsidence, potholes, breaks in wearing course and submit a weekly report to the Principal Chief Engineer. They had also been directed to keep hot/cold mix of roads on standby and depending on the climatic condition – July being the midst of the monsoon season – to undertake repair work at the first dry spell.
Three years later none of what was discussed at that meeting and decided appears to have been done as the state of roads has considerably worsened with every year and even the temporary repairs with the mix have not been undertaken, which brings us back a full circle on the issue. Is the department interested in repairing or refilling the potholes? If meetings with an action plan do not yield results, will the threat of punishment? Goa cannot keep waiting for the Public Works Department to repair the roads. It has been long enough and the ride has been horrible. The past promises of repairing the potholes have been full of holes themselves. Whether this one will follow the same pattern will be known in early November, until then Goans will just have to rough it out on the roads.
