Nothing has dominated the public discourse this monsoon more than the debate over the pathetic condition of the roads across Goa.
Be it the national highways, State highways, Major District Roads (MDRs) or the ones in Goa’s cities, towns or interiors of its villages, it would be a miracle to find a stretch of road that hasn’t been battered and left pot-holed with the monsoon.
The condition of roads is the worst in decades and the officialdom will want us to believe that it is the record 150-plus inches of rain that the monsoon has poured on them this year. Yet, everyone has been pinning the blame on PWD.
And not without reason. Perceived to be one of the most corrupt of departments and the most sought after portfolio among politicos, the PWD has been pouring bitumen on Goa’s road networks for decades. But much like water flows off a duck’s back, the bitumen just slips off the roads leaving them seem like the crater-filled surface of the moon as the monsoon pounds them every year. The key questions that pop up on anyone’s mind therefore are:
Why cannot roads be laid with material which can withstand the monsoon rain?
What is the Quality Control division of the PWD doing to improve road construction and repair techniques?
If you ask the top brass at the PWD why the roads have reached the pathetic condition they have, like we posed the question to Principal Chief Engineer Uttam Parsekar, pop comes the answer: “We have had rains this year which we haven’t seen in Goa for more than five decades”.
Water is said to be the worst enemy of bitumen, but road experts beg to differ and say it is more a fallacy because bitumen is impermeable. What however makes roads prone to damage due to heavy rainfall is when they remain inundated for long periods of time.
Roads also deteriorate faster if they already are in a slightly deteriorated condition even before the monsoon sets in.
“If there are small potholes, cracks or other types of distress on the road, the water seeps through these inside the road’s inner surface and that’s when the big damage is caused,” said a professor at the Government Engineering College.
Not wanting to be named, he said Goa’s roads are in shambles because quality control measures are given a go-by during the construction work. Also, there is absolutely no strategy in place in the PWD to manage maintenance of the roads in a scientific manner.
COSTS ARE HIGH BUT NO ONE CARES
Construction of roads takes lot of time and costs even higher. Sources in the PWD said a one-kilometer stretch of road costs in the region of Rs one-crore and takes around a month to execute. But, once complete, a spell of heavy rain during the next monsoon is sure to wash it away, in a handful of months.
One contractor, again on the condition of anonymity, backed Parsekar’s theory. Water and bitumen don’t gel. If one goes the other stays, he says, adding that the one single aim in every road contrat execution is to put in safeguards to ensure that water does not stay on the surface once it is complete.
During the monsoon, water must drain off the road, but it hardly happens and roads get washed out.
Contractors and experts agree that cambering - elevating the middle of the road - is quintessential to ensure rain water slides on the surface to the sides and off the road.
With a digitalized map of the road network, all roads can be viewed in a instant and decision-making as to repairs of which one has to be prioritised and with what kind of a repair technique becomes that much easier. It would be prudent to carry out pre-monsoon repairs to prevent seepage of rain water which eventually leads to their deterioration by the end of the season.
DRAINAGE MISSING
Drainage for roads is a bigger problem in Goa, especially those located near human settlements in Goa’s cities, towns and villages.
An engineer posted at the PWD’s quality control division claimed that the entire exercise of constructing roads is concentrated on how to ensure ground and surface water flows away.
According to him soil is chosen after a survey but when asked how seriously is this exercise taken, he only offers you a smile and goes on to rattle the technicalities in the rule book. Like the requirement to have a 90-cms high embankment to insulate the road from groundwater which can rise by capillary action.
The GEC professor meanwhile slammed PWD engineers who he said lack the conviction to ensure quality control measures kick in during construction itself.
“Bitumen is costly. Petty contractors who bag the road works do not have the equipment and also do not have trained hands to execute the road work. Often the prescribed quantity of bitumen is not used and there is no scientific strategy to maintain roads once complete,” the GEC professor said.
NO PREVENTIVE PRE-MONSOON MAINTENANCE?
As discussed earlier, bitumen is non-permeable material and by logic water should not penetrate the road’s top surface. But what in effect happens is rain water does seep in through already existing potholes, cracks and other distress signs on the road.
The GEC professor opined that more than post-monsoon repair work, roads in Goa desperately need preventive maintenance techniques even before the monsoon set in.
“Micro-surfacing is one measure which can be adopted but I am sure it will not happen in Goa very soon,” the civil engineering professor said, adding that waiting for rainfall to stop at the end of the monsoon before undertaking repair work is outdated thinking.
“With cold-mix technology where bitumen emulsion is used, repair work can be carried out even when it is pouring,” he said.
Digital mapping of road network could also help plan maintenance and repair of roads and is a factor that has not been given a serious look-in by the hierarchy at the PWD even as year after year, hundreds of crores of public money goes out of the coffers on building and maintaining roads, he added.
TENDER PROCESS IN MOTION
Meanwhile, the tender processes for carrying out post-monsoon repair works and also building new roads have already been set in motion by the PWD and the authorities are awaiting the opportune time to start execution of work. It’s another matter, whether the PWD officials tasked with the responsibility shed their legacy of corruption and incompetence to rise to the occasion and ensure quality control measures are ensured and the 2020 monsoon saves them the blushes of the all-pervading stick of criticism they faced this year.
