PANAJI
Impromptu re-digging of trenches and pits at multiple locations along the MG Road, one of the city's main trunk road, by contractors of the Imagine Panaji Smart City Development Limited has raised a spectre of doubt that major Smart City work will be completed ahead of the High Court mandated March 31 deadline.
A trench was dug earlier this week at the Don Bosco-Alfran Plazza junction apparently to facilitate work linked to the sewerage project and laying of service pipelines. Local businessmen said, this road-digging has been done at this particular spot at least for the fourth time in the last one year.
Supervisors at the location were reluctant to say what the reasons are for the road digging multiple times at the same spot.
A little further eastwards along the MG Road, impromptu digging was also carried out at the Vishal Mega Mart junction. Reasons for digging these stretches have remained a mystery given that IPSCDL itself had announced that all underground work related to the sewerage project and laying of pipelines for utility and other services had been completed on the MG Road in February itself.
Meanwhile, elsewhere near the CCP market, several excavators were roving around the area transporting material as engineers and labourers were working overtime to complete work there before the March 31 deadline.
Interestingly, work on one major smart city project -- concrete smart road from the Old Patto bridge to the Four Pillars junction -- is yet to be started.
The 1.4-kilometer section of the road hugging the Ourem creek was one of the four stretches of roads which were to be taken up for development as 'smart roads' at a total cost of Rs 120 crore.
The other three stretches -- in St Inez from the Taj Vivanta (Sotree) junction to the Goa International Hotel at Tonca; Bal Bhavan to the Madhuban Complex via the Caculo Mall junction and an internal stretch between Tonca junction at the western end of the St Inez Catholic cemetery to the Madhuban Complex via the crematorium, have already been developed into concrete smart roads.
