the goan I network
CANACONA
A PWD official and a road contractor agreed to repair a potholed road along a stretch of the NH-66 at Nagorcem-Canacona, after they were made to sit in an ambulance and witness a painful journey on the potholes on Monday.
According to locals, the PWD (Water Supply) had excavated around 500 metres of the road on the NH-66 at Nagorcem to lay a new pipeline from Chapoli dam to WTD Shristhal and closed the trench just before the monsoon.
Unhappy locals complained that the PWD (highways) had failed to repair the road properly, leading to several potholes at the site. This had caused severe hardship to motorists and commuters, besides acute pain to patients traveling in ambulances.
Aggrieved over the bad condition of a stretch of the highway in Canacona, some activists on Monday forced the PWD (Highways) assistant engineer and the road contractor to travel in an ambulance, to get a feel of the hardships that patients and people have been made to endure.
Around a dozen of people, including Janardhan Bhandari, Vikas Bhagat, Ashish Phaldessai, Pralay Bhagat and Mithil Chari, first met the PWD (Highway) office and confronted Assistant Engineer Subhash Pagi seeking his explanation.
At first, Pagi reportedly tried to pacify the agitating youth by attributing the bad road on the heavy rains, but the activists sought to know why had the PWD failed to repair the road after laying the pipeline well before monsoons.
They also sought to know what had kept away the contractor from repair/reinstating the road properly, instead of merely dumping mud which would get washed away in the rains.
Refusing to accept the assistant engineer’s explanations, the activists then asked the AE and PWD Road contractor to get a first-hand feel of the hardships confronting patients travelling in ambulances on the bad road.
An ambulance was then brought to the site and the contractor’s representative was made to sleep on the ambulance bed, while the PWD AE was asked to sit on the other side.
The ambulance was then taken on the potholed road with the same speed when transporting patients on the road, while Bhandari and another activist also sat in the ambulance.
The contractor’s representative reportedly admitted the painful journey through the potholed road and agreed that the pain would have been more severe for patients.
The contractor and the assistant engineer later agreed to get the road repaired within within 15 days.
