MARGAO
Heavy and incessant rains inundated roads and disrupted vehicular traffic at several areas of the commercial capital on Friday.
While the Margao Municipal Council had floated a tender to desilt drains and gutters and the Water Resources Department (WRD) the storm water nullahs, many areas prone to flooding were inundated with rain water.
The Old Station Road was submerged with water, leaving pedestrians to wade through the waters. Owners of business establishments seemed to have resigned to their fate, saying though the former MMC chairperson Rajendra Ajgaonkar had got the drains along the station road cleared of the silt, flooding came to haunt them once again.
“The Municipality must have cleared around 7-8 truck loads of silt from the drains, but flooding has come back again. The shopkeepers have been affected by the inundation, but we have become like tigurs (catfish), to live in the water every monsoons,” informed a shopkeeper Satish Nerulkar.
Water-logging was witnessed along the Old Market Circle-KTC road once again, indicating that the issue of flooding remains unresolved till date.
The Margao Municipal Square also witnessed water-logging. In fact, one could come across water submerging the footpath of the Municipal garden near the traffic island in front of the Comunidade building. Sources said this is perhaps the first time in recent times that the footpath of the MMC garden was submerged by rain water, and the situation was attributed to the road height coming on par with the footpath because of hot mixing.
The fire brigade was called to an area close to the Chowgule college after water from the rains entered the residential locality. Fire officer Gill D’Sa said the fire brigade had received a call that rain water had entered the residential locality as the water could not flow freely through the drains.
