MARGAO: Concerned citizens from Nuvem constituency submitted a memorandum on Thursday to the PWD Highway Division’s Executive Engineer (EE), highlighting the prolonged issue of non-functional traffic signals on National Highway (NH) 17 and 66. They emphasised the continuous danger to public life, citing recent accidents, including a fatal one involving an auto-rickshaw.
Following their meeting, the EE wrote a letter to the Traffic police asking for urgent deployment of policemen at the traffic signals in Nuvem.
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In their letter, the citizens urgently appealed to the PWD to ensure immediate restoration of traffic signals at all intersections on highways in Nuvem. Expressing fears about road safety and the authorities’ disregard for the pain and suffering caused during accidents, they outlined the non-working condition of traffic signals for the past year.
The memorandum detailed the alarming frequency of accidents, loss of life, fatal injuries, and property damage due to the non-operational traffic signals.
They pointed out that within the last one month, three major accidents had occurred, resulting in the death of two individuals and injuries to several others. The citizens further referred to the emergence of massive highways in Nuvem attracting substantial traffic and the root cause being the non-functional traffic signals at four intersections.
“The situation is so alarming that citizens are worried about their family members stepping out in vehicles daily as we do not know when the next accident would occur,” the concerned citizens added
“Your office which is in-charge of the maintenance and upkeep of these traffic signals cannot be a mute spectator to this continuous danger to public life and absence of an important facility such as traffic signals for such a long period of time cannot be condoned, as it is your bounden duty to ensure that the same is operational and downtime if any of these signals is quickly addressed as it is a matter of life and death and not some luxury requirement,” they added further.
They called for coordination with the traffic cell of the road transport department (RTO) to deploy necessary traffic policemen temporarily to prevent further casualties.
