TEAM HERALD
MARGAO: Accident prone Arlem-Raia road – which has claimed the lives of many a motorist and pedestrians – is once again in the news.
Around a kilometre stretch of the four-lane road, which was excavated for laying a water pipeline under the JICA project, once again poses a danger to motorists. The road has settled down along the entire stretch and craters have surfaced at some places, but the road condition has not spurred the PWD and JICA officials to undertake road repair on utmost priority.
The bad condition of the road sounds surprising, given that the agreement mandates JICA to look after the maintenance of the road for two years after laying the pipeline.
Saturday saw residents of Raia, including outgoing sarpanch Xavier Fernandes and activist Jesus Romao taking to the streets to demand attention of the authorities to the danger posed to motorists on the kilometre-long stretch. Xavier said the Panchayat had written a letter to the District Magistrate on June 30, drawing his attention to the bad condition of the road, but there’s no action forthcoming from any of the authorities till date.
“We give the district magistrate and the PWD time till next Saturday to repair the road or the residents will be forced to block the road,” Xavier warned.
He pointed that the district authorities should make JICA honour the condition to maintain the road for a period of two years. “It was this condition that had granted permission to JICA to dig the road to lay the pipeline. It’s time the authorities make JICA comply with the condition,” he said.
Activist Jesus Romao contended that JICA is only resorting to an eyewash without actually doing the road repair. ‘The contractor is only using rubble and small size mettle stones. It can be observed that he has not used bigger size mettle stones and other mettle stone affecting the quality of the road,” he said.
When Herald contacted a JICA official, he said that a four-member gang of labourers is deployed at the site for road repairs.
