The agitated residents of Raia on Saturday enforced a five-and-half-hour-long blockade to protest against government apathy and indifference towards the accident prone road after their deadline to the PWD to take up the repair work on it expired on Friday.
Vehicular traffic came to a complete halt as huge serpentine queue of vehicles was seen on both sides of the road since 10 am. It was only after the PWD officials gave a written undertaking to the village panchayat that work on resurfacing of the road from Arlem to Raia will be completed by April 30 after starting the work from today that the blockade was lifted by the residents.
Plea by senior PWD officials led by Chief Engineer D Borkar that work on the killer road has been tendered and the contractor fixed to repair the road failed to convince the protestors, with residents maintaining that the government authorities have only paid lip service to the long-pending issue.
Curtorim MLA Reginaldo Lourenco and the local Raia Panch members led by Sarpanch Isidore Rodrigues joined the agitation as they protested over the rising number of accidents on the Arlem-Raia stretch. Raia Parish Priest Fr Leonardo Moraes and assistant Parish Priest Fr Dylon also descended on the road to express solidarity on the issue.
A local resident Romao Jesus demanded to know whether the government is neglecting the Arlem-Raia road on political grounds. Similar sentiments were echoed by Anthony Miranda who said the BJP should not come to their door steps of Raia people in the coming poll if they continue to discriminate against the villagers.
Former Raia Sarpanch Xavier Fernandes was engaged in heated arguments with the PWD Chief Engineer D Borkar over the faulty road engineering. Xavier demanded that the PWD depute its technical experts to rectify the engineering defects before carrying out the asphalting work.
PWD Chief Engineer, D G S Borkar later told the media that the road repair work included improvement of road geometrics and asphalting. “Work on the project costing Rs 4.60 crore has three components. One, it includes improvement in the geometrics, including profile correction of the road, raising the road wherever required including at the turns, during profile correction”, Borkar said.
replying to a question, Borkar said the PWD has already tendered the work and the contracted finalised, but there’s a delay in issuing the work order since the process is awaiting expenditure sanction from
the government.
