PANAJI
Public Works Minister Nilesh Cabral on Thursday told the Goa legislative assembly that the balance four-lane section of the new Zuari Bridge should be completed and opened for traffic by November this year.
"If all goes well, it should be completed and opened for traffic by November," Cabral told the House while replying to the discussion on the demands for grants pertaining to the PWD and other departments handled by him in the House.
Cabral during the course of his reply admitted that despite investment of thousands of crores, courtesy the MORTH, in improvement of the national highways there were still some bottlenecks, including at Verna (signal) and in Porvorim but urged the members to come up with positive and practical solutions to resolve these.
He also stated that all encroachments along the National Highway-66 will be removed within the next two months and added that the government is considering bringing all the traffic signals under the control of the PWD to be managed collectively using AI tools.
The minister also said that the 'PWD APP' he launched to report pot-holes on roads and get them rectified will also be extended to the water supply system in the near future.
"People will be able to report water leakages from pipelines and also shortages and breakdowns on the app," Cabral said, adding that currently the app is functioning satisfactorily vis-a-vis response time in mending potholes with jet patchers.
He said, there are seven jet-patchers operational in the State, four of these in the north and three in South Goa. The minister also added that in keeping with the Apex court judgement, national highways will no longer have any speedbreakers but just rumblers.
Quality of work
The minister said, the PWD is monitored for quality by RITES for every tendered work which is above Rs 50 lakh in value.
"After I took over, I realised that the RITES team was not working to my satisfaction. I took it up and was on the verge of terminating the contract but their senior officials intervened and they have given us a whole new team," Cabral said.
He also said, that contractors executing sub-standard work will be black-listed and it will also be made sure that they do not get awarded contracts from any government department.
"We have executed many contracts under the principle of defect liability period. If the same defects are repeated, it will be ensured that the contractor will not get work from any department," he added.
Cutting down on water wastage
The PWD minister said, almost 39% of treated water gets wasted and is non-revenue water (NRW) which is unacceptable.
He said, he is in the process of engaging the services of an agency on a public-private-partnership basis to bring down this wastage by improving metering.
The agency will be responsible to identify where metering is to be improved and what technology is to be used to bring down this 39% non revenue water.
"We produce nearly 600 million litres a day of treated water. Nearly 200 mld of this is non-revenue water," Cabral said, adding that it was too high and unacceptable.
