ALIYA ABREU
PANAJI
Even as the nation is in the midst of observing the 31st National Road Safety Week, Goa’s capital city Panaji, which carries vehicle load far lower than most other State capitals, has turned out to be drivers and riders’ worst nightmare.
Roads dug and hurriedly patched up across the city are downright death traps, and if there haven’t been any major accidents don’t thank the PWD or the civic authorities. Pompously touted as the “smart city” in waiting by the government and the establishment, Panjimites and its thousands of visitors are only left wondering when.
Forget about becoming smart, the authorities have not even bothered to ensure that has decent. The dug up patches shoddily filled up have re-opened leaving gaping wide holes at almost every 50-meter distance.
The condition on some sections of the “road” is so grave that it is not describable. Indeed, it seems like Panaji has just woken up a day after a war, and the Roads Division of the Public Works Department hasn’t had had the time to recover.
Take the Atmaram Borkar road that cuts through the city from the east to west. For a two-wheeler rider, it is a test of dodging skills. At the first junction (which leads to the CCP) one may as well feel you are on Mars: there isn’t any “road” at the junction, but a big brown crater and a rough patch.
The entire road ahead continues to be a big mess, with sewerage manholes jutting out, and random stones being used to fill in big gaps in the tar, left by the recent digging for cable laying and shoddy patchwork done on them.
The parallel road to its north, the famous Mahatma Gandhi Road, too at every 50 meters features a big 12-inch wide gaping “hole”, for lack of a better word, stretching across it. Much like a gutter in the middle of it, after every few meters. The icing on the cake, if you could call it that, was a little away from the “Panaji” jurisdiction, in neighbouring Taleigao, where a truck had spilled laterite mud and stone along a huge stretch, just before the St Michael’s School.
And, most two-wheeler riders without helmets rode over the loose mix of mud and stone clearly an accident waiting to happen... And an accident did occur around 6 pm during the rush hour with office-goers returning home.
One two-wheeler rider sans helmet skidded on the mud. The accident left him shaken, his knees hurt. The traffic on both sides was held up.
Having spent most of 2019 complaining about roads across the State, the persistent poor quality of roads has undoubtedly left every Goan hoping the authorities will ensure better roads at least before Monsoon 2020 kicks in. Not much too ask for, yet clearly an uncertainty.
