Congress leader Janardhan Bhandari looks on as Goa Forward Party Environment Cell Chairman Vikas Bhagat seals the PWD assistant engineer’s cabin in Canacona on Wednesday.
CANACONA
Upset over the PWD’s indifferent approach in tackling bad roads in Canacona, activists reacting in an unusual manner by locking the PWD (roads) assistant engineer and junior engineer in their office at Canacona for two hours on Wednesday morning.
“We locked the PWD officials in the cabin to get them to unlock development works for the people of Canacona,” said Bhandari, after police forced the activists to open the lock and release the assistant engineer and his junior.
A panch from the Shristhal Panchayat also sat on a hunger strike to protest against the failure of the PWD officials to begin road repair work in Shristhal.
Goa Forward Party Environment Cell Chairman Vikas Bhagat locked the office of PWD (roads) Assistant Engineer in the presence of Bhandari and JanaSena Warriors, confining the assistant engineer and junior engineer inside the cabin for two hours.
“Our anger was towards the PWD (highways), but we found no officer present in the cabin and so, we turned out attention to officials at the PWD (roads), as they are equally careless about the bad and accident-prone roads in the taluka,” said Bhandari.
Incidentally, there was commotion in the office as the activists refused to open the lock. They relented only after the arrival of the Canacona police.
Activists then opened the lock in the presence of police and sought the assurance from the officer to start the repair works wherever needed, Bhandari said.
Around the same time, Shristhal Panch Ramu Naik sat on a hunger strike on Wednesday to protest against the failure of PWD officials to start road works in Shristhal even after promising to do it.
PWD officials initially failed to take cognisance of Naik’s hunger strike, but after they were locked in the cabin for two hours, they assured Ramu Naik to complete the road work in Shristhal village at the earliest.
Naik warned PWD officials that if they failed to honour their promise by May 6, he would proceed on an indefinite hunger strike.
Besides Bhandari and Bhagat, others present included Vaishnav Pednekar, Cleston Viegas, Vaishal Pagi and Siddharth Naik.
