The entire infrastructure of Goa is crumbling and is in a terrible state. Every road has deep potholes, cuts across the roads are seen every few metres. The private utility providers have cut up most roads to lay their cables or plastic pipes, many of which are jutting out dangerously and caused deep trenches on the roads. There is no asphalt left on the streets as they are completely bare and as such patchworks which are sometimes done serves no purpose.
All this takes a toll on our vehicles and on the person, causing injuries or accidents. The government officials travel in their official cars and do not have to pay for the maintenance of their vehicles.
In Panjim City one of the worst roads is the Dada Vaidya road, all dug up, with uneven chamber covers and open potholes; every few metres the road has cuts across which are apparently undertaken to lay pipelines/cables.
We had the Nation’s President visiting for the Liberation day festivities and at that time a few of the roads were given a perfunctory facelift. We also have had the Vice President of the country Venkaiah Naidu in Goa for a short period.
I wonder what sort of repairs were done to our roads to herald his arrival. He should certainly be driven on the horrible, bumpy Miramar-Dona Paula road to see for himself how the contractor concerned did a shoddy work with taxpayers money of more than Rs 85 crores and got away with it. Our out-of-state dignitaries should be taken around the whole Capital city on the dilapidated roads and footpaths to see first-hand how our City is crumbling and decaying.
Can we say that these are the hallmarks of a city aspiring to be a Smart city? The road network, the footpaths – none of which are aligned properly with the road with lots of obstructions which could cause grave injury to pedestrians needs to be upgraded. For one of the smallest Capital cities with a population of around a lakh, Panjim fares very badly and it reflects the inefficiency and lacklustre attitude of the City officials. When the MLA of Panjim was a Mapsekar due to the non-development of the City people aspired to have an Ponjekar MLA who of course got elected on a ticket of a different party and big promises were made for Panjim but nothing has reached its fruition. Apparently, having cunningly switched over the party it is felt that promises made need not be kept.
The whole of Panjim City needs hot mixing of every road, proper gutters maintained, even foot paths for people to walk on and sprucing up of the City. Funds of Rs 100 crore allocated towards the Liberation year celebrations would be better spent on the maintenance for all of Goa roads and infrastructure. How long the citizens have to suffer on these bad roads before work is taken up to improve the infrastructure?
