PANAJI
The southwest monsoon has arrived and with the persistent rain more trouble for the beleaguered Imagine Panaji Smart City Development Ltd (IPSCDL) and its contractors in finishing work and winding up the ‘Smart City’ operations in the capital city.
The rains over the last couple of days has slowed down completion of works of a major sewerage chamber at the Caculo Mall-Fire Services junction which has made the June 10 deadline to finish the last stretch of the project look impossible to meet.
A top IPSCDL official however said the contractor is trying to complete the work despite the difficulties. He also said that the junction itself will be concretised over the weekend and then opened which will help traffic movement.
The blockage of this junction had rendered unusable the Fire Services to Bal Bhavan road which leads to the city’s outer DB Marg becoming the cause of major hurdle to vehicular movement between Panaji and its Taleigao and Caranzalem suburbs.
The stretch between Caculo Mall and the STP, Tonca is the final part of the sewerage projects and is about 150 meters in length. After pipes are laid and sewerage system completed, this 150 meter stretch of road will be taken up for concretisation as part of the ‘Smart Road’ project of the nearly two kilometer long section between Taj Vivanta junction in St Inez and Goa International T-Junction at Tonca-Miramar. However with the rains already here this work may overrun to beyond the end of the monsoon, the IPSCDL official said.
Elsewhere across the city and beyond in the Ribandar area, although work is almost complete, the restoration of the battered roads is still in progress. Here too the rains have hampered work, including finishing the redesigned pavements.
Also, laying of service lines in all areas where work was done is also currently underway but IPSCDL officials were not willing to put a firm date for completion of all this work, saying it is now at the mercy of the weather.
