NESHWIN ALMEIDA
neshwin@herald-goa.com
Borda, part of the Margao town, has undergone massive development and is no more a suburb but an extension of the city like Aquem to Margao, Taleigao-Caranzalem to Panjim, Karaswada to Mapusa, Baina to Vasco and Chaudi to Canacona.
The number of housing societies and multi building structures has tripled and the traffic has doubled. Borda has been going through road widening in bits and pieces in a haphazard way for the past six years. The residents are not happy about the pace of road widening and the manner in which it is done with the road curving again and again from the Bolshe–Chowgule College circle right up till the St Joaquim Chapel-Fatorda Junction.
“One portion of the road cannot be widened because of the heritage structures but from the St Joaquim Chapel itself which has an illegal portico and the many religious crosses along the road which have been protected has made the entire road widening terrible and meaningless,” explains Ranjit Pereira who lives in Borda for the last 40 years and has seen it change and develop.
Ranjit explains that political affiliation has not only saved the religious crosses and one temple at Multipurpose school but the illegal kiosks and gaddas also benefitted from these structures and all this is because of the current and former MLA Vijai Sardessai and Damu Naik’s blessing.
The road widening seems to have been finished with and now the question is about the alignment since the road doesn’t meet the stipulated 7.5 metres on either side, as the land acquisition on either side was faulty and done dreadfully by the PWD.
“In some places the road is twenty metres wide, in some places it is just seven metres and the problem is that there is no divider and no subway. How do senior citizens and stray animals cross a 20-metre busy road with 100 cars passing by every half hour,” questions a dismayed Jose Maria Miranda, a Borda resident and activist.
But the woes are not just that. The road is patched and broken and potholed and repaired in bits after the Reliance Jio cable was laid and many people took their sewerage connections. The road has missing asphalt and badly patched layers of rubble and earth still stuck to it at many places.
And the shocker came when the PWD send just two men to lay the thermoplast radium markers on the road. With no barricades and assistance and no technical support or officer present at the site from the PWD, the workers decided to do an easy job out. They started darkening the worn-out old jagged white lines at the centre and at the sides.
When questioned as to why they are not taking new measurements based on the road widening and placing the markers with new alignments and why is there no PWD engineer when they were executing the road marking, they replied. “We’re contracted to the PWD and they didn’t provide more staff, also we’re not briefed to take new measurements and realign the markings, so we’re setting the markings based on the old ones.”
The work was stopped and the local MLA Vijai Sardessai was asked to intervene. But his reply was that he’s in Delhi attending a wedding and all he can do is stall the work and get the PWD to call us but he cannot intervene in correcting the road marking work.
The MLA’s office got Herald in touch with the PWD Junior Executive Engineer Neshlyn D’Silva who pointed out, “We are taking 3.5 metres from the centre line and marking the road which is the old markings actually. The road widening is not done in a standard manner, hence we’re unable to put a divider or increase the number of lanes.”
Admitting that he is aware there is imbalance in spacing on both ends and the road can be an accident prone zone, Neshlyn said “widening seems impossible in a proper manner till the State decides on religious structures.”
Borda resident Nilesh Kamat pointed out that “the entire process of the road widening seems defeated because the widened road portion is either used for parking by four-wheelers, buses and truck owners or by people who have warehouses and storage space while they run their business in Margao.”
“The widened portion is a hub for eateries and food and ros omlet gaddas which the municipality illegally allows to function,” Nilesh quipped.
