VASCO
Barely two days after monsoon showers flooded the roads near police quarters at Vasco and Baina, blocked roads continued to disrupt normal life in the port town after the road near Our Lady of Candelaria High School got flooded due to heavy rains
on Saturday.
This time, the Water Resources Department (WRD) has been blamed for blocking the flow of rainwater during a beautification drive of Baina Lake near Our Lady of Candelaria High School, which led to flooding after incessant rains on Friday night. It was only after the Mormugao Municipal Council (MMC) Chairperson Deepak Naik and councillors intervened in the matter and requested a local architect to demolish a portion of his compound wall, that operations were carried out over eight hours to flush out the rainwater.
According to reports, the WRD had taken up beautification of Baina Lake in March and while constructing a concrete retaining wall, blocked all passages facilitating the flow of rainwater.
With heavy rains on Friday night, the road near Our Lady of Candelaria High School got flooded on Saturday morning and rainwater even entered the school premises and some houses. Efforts by the Vasco fire personnel to pump out the rainwater into a nearby drain failed as they had only one submersible pump which could not take the load and it stopped functioning.
On Saturday morning, schoolchildren, their parents, teachers, office-goers and motorists had a tough time passing along the flooded road.
“I had informed the WRD engineer to keep some openings to facilitate the flow of rainwater along the road. I even told the engineer that there were natural passages for rainwater to flow into the lake,” Ward Councillor Dhanpal Swami told The Goan.
“However, my requests fell on deaf ears and the engineer bluntly told me that the passages were not shown in the plan and that he would construct the retaining walls as per the plan.” “This is negligence by the WRD engineer, who failed to listen to me pleas and as a result, schoolchildren and others were put to hardship on Saturday morning. The WRD engineer should be taken to task for this situation,” Swami added.
Local architect, Peter Rodrigues, was also affected as rainwater entered his house in the area. “The plan drawn by WRD is faulty as they failed to keep passages for rainwater to flow in the lake. We stay in a low lying area and during monsoon, water from the hillock flows down through natural pathways leading to the lake.”
“This is for the first time we faced floods due to negligence of WRD engineers and their faulty plans. The government should initiate inquiry into this matter,” Rodrigues added.
On receiving the news, MMC Chairperson Deepak Naik and Councillor Fredric Henriques rushed to the site and requested Rodrigues to demolish a portion of his compound wall and open a drain leading to the main nullah. Workers then managed to
partially drain out the rainwater after toiling for almost
eight hours.
