MARGAO
The saga of the near five-km stretch of the Mungul-Colva road, which was taken up for widening in a great hurry ahead of the BRICS summit at Benaulim on October 15-16 in the year 2016, continues,
with the road still awaiting completion.
It’s exactly four years now since the BRICS summit was hosted in Salcete’s coastal belt for the foreign dignitaries, but neither is the road stretch hot mixed, nor given the final touches by way of beautification, which was part of the original tender work.
This important stretch of the road, heading to the world-famous Colva beach, ought to have been completed on utmost priority, given the amount of traffic during the peak tourism season. Sadly, the road has not received the attention it deserved in the last four years, as a result of which it has remained incomplete to date.
That’s not all. Right from day one, the government was indecisive on the agency which will take up
the hot-mixing and beautification work.
Initially, the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation (GSIDC) was awarded the task of preparing the estimates and take up the work on the project.
As per government instruction, the GSIDC had prepared the estimates for the project, indicating that the work would cost the exchequer a whopping Rs 11 crore.
However, before the GSIDC could float the tender inviting prospective contractors to execute the project, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar issued a diktat that road hot-mixing and beautification works should be taken up by the PWD.
The ground reality, however, did not change for the better since then. The project had been pending with the PWD since then and it was only after Benaulim MLA Churchill Alemao personally took up the matter with Chief Minister Pramod Sawant that the PWD has sent in motion the process to take up the work.
If PWD officials are to be believed, the work on the project, which would cost the exchequer over Rs 11 crore, has gone to the government for expenditure sanction, with an official saying that the PWD would issue the work order after the sanction.
The Benaulim MLA, however, has exuded confidence that the work on the Mungul-Colva stretch will get underway in the near future after completion of the tendering process.
“After I personally took up the matter with the Chief Minister, things have started moving in the right direction. I do not know why the project was held up before I became the MLA, but now since I have taken up the issue with the Chief Minister and PWD Minister Deepak Pauskar, the road works should start in the near future,” he said.
