After endless wait, road to forsaken Vavurla enters home stretch

Margao: The earthmovers finally arrived. Heavy machinery now rumbles across the steep, forested slopes and mounds of road construction material lie stacked at the site — unmistakable signs that Vavurla, a remote mountain-top hamlet that officialdom forgot existed, is inching towards the end of its long, painful isolation.Over three years after the construction of the 3.5 km road linking Vavurla to Kude (from where the road leads to Gaondongrim in Canacona, 11 km away) was formally launched on Dec 27, 2023, the work entered its final leg. The project, awarded at a cost of over Rs 2 crore following a single tender bid, stalled repeatedly.Forest department objections over the road’s passage through thick forest, a number of landslides in rapid succession, and mounting cost overruns conspired to push the deadline well beyond the original one-year completion target embedded in the tender conditions. Work halted for the monsoons. Now, with the rains behind them, contractors and machinery are back with what officials say is a serious, final push.A 100 per cent tribal-inhabited village which comes under the Barcem panchayat has a population of a little over 300, with around 35 houses. TOI was the first to highlight the plight of the village in May 2015, and since then relentlessly stressed the need to mainstream its tribal residents — year after year, through govts that came and went and promises that evaporated.Ironically, the forest that the tribals called home across generations was the very thing that the state machinery cited to keep them cut off. Restrictions on development within forest areas meant road construction was perpetually stalled.To understand Vavurla, one must first reckon with Aug 15, 2019. While the nation celebrated its 73rd Independence Day, Vavurla lived its most heartbreaking one. Govind Kuiro Velip was carried down a treacherous mountain path on a makeshift stretcher, 4 neighbours straining under his weight across 3.5 km of steep, forest-shrouded trail, to reach the nearest motorable road. Velip suffered a cardiac arrest. By the time he reached the primary health centre at Canacona, 15 km away, and was referred onwards to GMC Bambolim, he was gone. Velip’s death certificate said cardiac arrest. Vavurla knew better.It was not an isolated case. For years, chairs stripped of their legs doubled as stretchers. The sick, the elderly, and women in labour — all were carried up and down these slopes. Students picked their way through thick forest each morning to get to their schools. “Our only demand was that govt provide our village with a road so that at least ambulances can fetch the sick to hospital,” Manju Velip said when the road work was launched in Dec 2023. “Hopefully, with the road work now being launched, our hardships will end soon.”Moved by the plight of the villagers after reading about it in TOI, Margao resident Sanjay Dessai wrote to the Prime Minister’s Office about the missing road connectivity to Vavurla.The PMO directed Goa’s public grievance department to take up the matter. The grievance department passed it to the Superintending Engineer, PWD Margao. The SE forwarded it to the Executive Engineer. The EE forwarded it to the Assistant Engineer, Canacona. And from the AE’s office came the reply: “Road passes through forest land and no NOC is available from the Forest Department.” The file, in other words, made a full circle.The forest NOC issue was the single most persistent obstacle the road project faced even after it was eventually sanctioned and tendered. The road passes through a swathe of thick forest and required negotiation with the forest department.“Landslides on the precarious slopes added to the delays, at times undoing stretches of work already completed. Costs crept upward. The contractor’s 1-year completion window came and went. Monsoons arrived and work halted again,” official sources said.Finally, after all the years and all the heartbreak, Vavurla is simply getting connected.