Incessant rains lashed the State on Friday morning inundating low-lying areas and paralyzing normal life. Thousands of people were inconvenienced as flooding led to massive traffic jams. There are several lessons to be learnt from the flooding on Friday.
The ongoing construction of the new highway at Bambolim kept most of the passages and drains blocked. This problem should have been identified much before the monsoon commenced and passage for the free flow of rains water provided for. The road after the Zuari bridge on the Panjim side has become a road-users nightmare. Deep craters have developed on the roads making it extremely difficult for the traffic to move, special the two- wheeler. Mud on the roads at the construction sites has led to slippery conditions. Several accidents have taken place here. Hill-cutting for widening of roads has also led to land-slides. Cutting of trees along the highway has led to the soil on the hill becoming loose leading to land-slides. All these problems should have been foreseen by the authorities and necessary remedial steps taken well in advance.
Retaining walls could have been built to prevent land-slides at vulnerable spots. It would have been desirable to halt all the construction work till the monsoon had subsided. But then all the construction work are reportedly running behind schedule.
The problem is aggravated because of the construction work of two major bridges the new Zuari Bridge and the third Mandovi Bridge which are being carried out simultaneously as also the widening of the approach roads and construction of flyovers. There is also the work of the construction of flyover at Baina which is underway. All this construction work has had a huge impact on the normal flow of the rain-water leading to flooding at several places.
Whenever there is flooding in the cities during heavy showers, the government and the civic bodies are always blamed. We citizens are equally responsible for the same. The prime reason for the flooding of the roads is because of the clogging of the drains by plastic waste. We Goans may not think twice about throwing the garbage by the roadside and in the water bodies which ultimately ends up in the storm drains clogging them.
A video on the social media shows a senior citizen caught in the act of disposing a bag of garbage by the roadside. When questioned the citizen retorted by saying that everyone does it. If this is our attitude then we have no right to blame the authorities for the flooding of our roads. We need to learn a lesson. Sooner the better.
