No doubt it has been raining continuously for the last few weeks and Goa has even received more than the average rain for this period. Facing the rain have been centuries-old structures that have not crumbled under the relentless pounding, but a concrete road that was built just recently was washed away at Pernem. The 6.5-metre wall collapsed and brought down with it a portion of the concrete road that was only recently opened for traffic. Surprised? Last year in the same month, a 25-metre retaining wall and portion of the road had collapsed. Apparently there were no lessons learnt. After the road got washed away, Deputy Chief Minister Manohar Ajgaonkar, PWD Minister Deepak Pauskar and PWD Chief Engineer U Kulkarni inspected the site. The Dy CM directed the PWD Chief Engineer to file a complaint against the highway contractor for negligence and ordered that the stretch be rebuilt.
In the course of time the road will be rebuilt, but will any action be taken against the contractor? A concrete road cannot get washed away very easily. It points out to shoddy work, poor quality of materials and equally poor supervision by the authorities – in short corruption. According to locals, the road had developed a crack last month and posed a danger to motorists. Allegations by residents in the neighbourhood is that low-quality recycled material was used to construct the road, that the retaining wall does not have a strong base which led to the mud getting washed off in the rains, resulting in the collapse of the wall and road. Will all this be probed by the police or the government to get to the bottom of the disaster and pull up those responsible? Or will the police merely go through the motions during the investigation and wait for the incident to be forgotten, before closing the probe?
Under the circumstances, the government has to take strong action against the contractor, and merely the filing of a case will not do. But will the government act?
The opposition Congress has demanded a judicial inquiry into all the works undertaken by the contractor – M Venkata Rao Infra Pvt Ltd – who is also the contractor for highway expansion project. Congress has also called it ‘loot’ and demanded that the contractor be placed on the blacklist. The Aam Aadmi Party has made a similar demand to ban contractor and charged that the BJP has been favouring the contractor despite his shoddy work. AAP too pointed out that the locals had raised the suspicion of bad quality of work and supervision during the construction, but there was no response from the authorities. Now that there has been a disaster and the proof of shoddy work is there for all to see, will the government act differently? That is what we will have to wait and see.
What occurred is a direct consequence of the authorities ignoring the warnings of the people of the substandard work. If lay persons could detect that the work was not meeting the standards, how did this escape those who certified the quality of the work? Will the PWD explain this to the people of Goa? It is the taxpayers’ money that has gone into the construction of this road, so they have the right to an answer. It is time that the government makes its employees liable for damages in such cases, failing which the quality of work and the supervision will never improve. The government servant who certified the work is aware that he or she will always be protected, so takes the task lightly. The incident smacks of corruption where a large number of persons would be involved. The government has to unearth it. It cannot act so casually on the issue.
