Margao: Cuncolim MLA Clafasio Dias on Friday assured the people of Chandor-Cavorim and Guirdolim that the State Highway 8 passing through their villages would be downgraded to Major District Road within a month.
“I would do my best to further downgrade it to a village road,” he added.
He was addressing a large number of residents of Chandor-Cavorim and Guirdolim, who had gathered at a meeting convened by him, to discuss the State Highway 8 against which the villagers have been agitating for quite some time.
Recalling that Chief Minister Pramod Sawant had last year assured that the notification denotifying the State Highway 8 passing through their villages would be issued shortly, Clafasio said the delay was primarily because he was trying to downgrade it directly to a village road.
“I am told by the PWD officials that a road demarcated as State Highway cannot directly be downgraded to village road and has to be first made a Major District Road,” he said asking people to agree to it and further work for converting it into a village road.
Clafasio said, “I had no objections if the State Highway was shown passing through Paroda as was shown in the Regional Plan.”
It was evident that TCP goofed up in a big way while preparing the Regional Plans 2001 and 2021, which showed, the State Highway 8 passing through Paroda and not Chandor-Cavorim or Guirdolim.
PWD Executive Engineer Prasad Palondikar disclosed that the road over bridge in the village will be 12 mts wide as is the norm in present times and clarified that he cannot say much on the matter as it was being constructed by the Railways and not PWD.
Clafasio agreed to lead the villagers to meet the CM on this matter as the villagers were demanding a six mts wide road with a barrier on top to avoid heavy vehicles from using it.
“We do not want heavy trucks carrying boulders and coal over the bridge,” said one villager.
There was a slight clash between some villagers from Guirdolim and Chandor-Cavorim over the road over bridge issue, as it was misunderstood that the Chandor people do not want the road over bridge.
“What we had asked for is stop the work on the road over bridge till such time State Highway is not denotified,” clarified Domnick Mendes from Chandor.
The villagers also clarified that they are not against the trucks carrying construction material but are totally opposed to trucks transporting boulders and coal; and asked the MLA to implement the Collector’s order banning heavy traffic from plying through the villages of Chandor-Cavorim and Guirdolim.
Palondikar asserted that the govtt does not have any proposal to acquire land right now. He said that the existing road will be frozen even for the future while assuring that the authorities do not wish to demolish any house or structure for road widening.
