Team Herald
Calangute: After repeated incidents of the Baga road in Calangute sinking at various spots due to shoddy work on the sewerage pipeline network, including multiple times at the Tito's lane junction, with loaded water tankers collapsing inside, Congress workers on Saturday said a sewerage chamber manhole on the busy beach road here has started sinking.
Holding a small protest to highlight the emerging hole, Calangute block Congress workers said the area around the sinking manhole has started oozing raw sewage which is flowing on the road which is used by a large number of vehicles and tourists visiting Calangute, and urged the authorities to take immediate steps to prevent any mishaps, they said.
They said there is a strong possibility of the road caving in during the coming monsoon, as has happened over the last few years on Baga road. “The JICA work on the sewerage pipeline network is going on and the sewage is coming out, but none of their engineers are there to look at this. It is clear that the work is shoddy. One of the sewerage chambers has collapsed. Already the Baga road has been sinking and now with the rains coming, the Calangute beach road is collapsing and the sewage is coming out,” Lawrence Silveira, Congress block president said.
Congress members said it's been more than 10 years since the sewerage pipeline network work started in Calangute and it's still not completed. “In Calangute we have not seen clean, smooth roads for more than 10 years. They're constantly sinking. Now the rains are coming, they'll start sinking again. Now it's sinking in May,” they said.
“Surrounding the chamber sewage water has started bubbling up like a fountain and we're sure it will sink further. Already some people on two-wheelers have fallen down but they did not die. Maybe they're waiting for someone to die before doing something,” the Congress workers said.
“Calangute is a world famous tourist destination and if you're going to bring in good tourists, then the infrastructure has to be developed properly,” they said.