It is not an uncommon sight to see several stretches of Goa’s roads turn into an ‘off-roader’s delight’ as soon as the monsoon hits each year. Riddled with a rash of potholes, some deep enough to damage the chassis of a low car, such roads are nothing short of nightmares for commuters and pedestrians alike.
For a State that otherwise boasts of relatively smooth roads – especially in the villages – during the rest of the year, it is nothing short of alarming that persistent spells of heavy rain are all that are needed to transform butter-like stretches into virtual war zones. That mere drops of water are able to pierce the tarmac and expose the rubble beneath it is testament to the slipshod job done by contractors roped in by the Public Works Department or the poor quality of material used.
As a stopgap measure to provide commuters with some semblance of safety, the government introduced jet patcher vehicles that can fill up potholes with asphalt in a matter of a few minutes. While this intervention works extremely well during the dry months, it only adds to the people’s woes during the monsoon as the asphalt, which is rather loosely laid, comes undone after a single shower, resulting in craters that are much deeper than the ones it was meant to cover up. Even large vehicles like goods carriers and passenger buses can be seen swaying wildly on many affected road stretches as they attempt to negotiate these ditches.
The frequency of accidents along such roads is exacerbated as vehicles seeking to avoid potholed zones invariably go on to the wrong lanes, resulting in collisions with oncoming traffic. Congestion, too, is the order of the day, as traffic flow slows down considerably with motorists choosing to carefully negotiate the highs and lows without damaging their vehicles.
If the government is indeed serious about providing its citizens with good, motorable roads, it will begin by not allowing any projects involving road-digging right from May up until the monsoon ends. This year for instance, rampant road-digging and cutting in several parts of the state to lay underground power cables went on even in June, leaving the department concerned with barely enough time to restore the stretches to their original form. Haphazard hotmixing or dumping rubble to level up the excavated portions as the monsoon raced toward Goa only made a bad situation worse once the rains arrived.
There also needs to be a quality control check on road works as huge sums of public money are spent on this basic infrastructure. Roads should be built to last for years, but in Goa, some get ruined in just a few months. For instance, the Bhatlem road, which lies on Panjim’s periphery, developed gaping potholes just two months after it was tarred, prompting an irate CCP to ask the PWD to blacklist the contractor concerned.
Down south in Curchorem, a local councillor has taken to a viral video campaign where he plans to upload one video on social media platforms each week highlighting the decrepit condition of roads in the town, hoping that widespread circulation of the videos will get the attention of Chief Minister Pramod Sawant who also holds the PWD portfolio.
Virtually the entire State is up in arms over bad roads considering that it is one of the most basic of infrastructure that a government should provide. Whether the powers that be wake up and fix the problem remains to be seen.
