JOYLIZA RODRIGUES
Even as the South-West monsoons are set to advance and reach Goa by the first week of June, giving much needed respite from the searing heat, Panjimites will be weary over the poor conditions of roads in and around the city. Be it the Dona Paula-Miramar road, the Dr. Jack Sequeira circle to the Dona Paula jetty, the interior roads in Caranzalem or the busy 18 June road, there seems to be digging all over with no intimation as to when or if the roads will return to normal before the state receives its first spell of showers.
The authorities – Public Works Department (PWD), the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation (GSIDC) and even the Corporation of the City of Panjim to some extent – have been supplying residents with hope ahead of the monsoons.
Both, the PWD and CCP dug the busiest of these roads – 18 June road in March this year. One was supposed to replace the old DI pipes with HDPE pipes as part of the JNURUMM project and the other to desilt the storm drains.
While these jobs have both been completed, the road conditions remain terrible and create traffic jams, chaos and pollute the area with dust the entire day. “The work is completed. Before the monsoons, temporary resurfacing of the road will be undertaken,” D G Borkar, Chief Engineer of the PWD told Herald. “The concretization will be possible only post monsoon,” he added.
CCP Mayor, Shubham Chodankar also confirmed the completion of the desilting work by the CCP. “We have directed the PWD to resurface the road before monsoon,” he added.
Elsewhere, the concretization of the stretch from Dona Paula to Miramar and the Dr Jack Sequeira circle to the jetty is history now. The Dona-Paula-Miramar road stretch was supposed to be completed by March end, this year, however. There seems to be no change in the situation.
Parents, students and teachers from Sharda Mandir High school, located on this stretch will be the biggest sufferers.
Meanwhile, pre-monsoon work is being undertaken in all 30 wards of the CCP with nearly a thousand workers engaged in desilting of gutters, pruning of trees and repair of drains.
The lack of sufficient manpower and the slow pace of work in the past couple of years has caused the CCP to be unable to cope up with pre-monsoon work and the pressure that comes along with it in time which resulted in issues like water logging, trees being uprooted, power supply interruptions etc during heavy downpours.. Normal life gets thrown out of gear and immense risk is posed to the lives and properties of the public in the process.
However, this time, the CCP has outsourced the pre-monsoon work to two private contractors- who have engaged 1000 workers in all 30-wards. “I am confident that before the onset of the monsoon, the work in all 30 wards will be completed,” the mayor said. “All wards have been given priority. But more attention is being given to flood prone wards like Mala and Tonca,” Chodankar said.
