Min: Road work was risky, contractor to be blamed

Panaji: For the first time after two major pipelines supplying water to Tiswadi and parts of Ponda taluka were washed away a week ago, minister for public works department Deepak Pauskar has squarely blamed the road contractor and said it was risky.
“It was a risk… the National Highway Authority of India contractor failed to realign the pipelines to a safer area, away from the sensitive stretch where the road works are on,” Pauskar told TOI.
Earlier, chief minister Pramod Sawant had given a clean chit to the contractor and brushed it aside as a natural calamity due to landslide.
Pauskar said the construction work caused the soil to be loosened, leaving the entire stretch vulnerable to landslide. “Under the work order, he was supposed to shift the pipes in 2016, before starting the road widening,” Pauskar said on Wednesday.
Also, the underground springs in the area compromised the stability of the pipelines.
“Whenever there is heavy rainfall, the flow of underground springs increases, which can damage old or faulty foundations,” Pauskar said.
On Wednesday, the department restored one of the two pipelines and Pauskar exuded confidence that no landslide would move it.
“But there are other areas along the new highway stretch which continue to remain vulnerable. A landslide could cause another section of the pipeline to wash away and the crisis could occur again,” Pauskar said.
The solution, he said, was in realigning the pipeline at the earliest. “We also have to come up with a masterplan to put in place alternative pipelines for every route, be it Opa to Panaji or Selaulim to Vasco,” he said.
Locals said the current highway works had blocked a natural spring and they had written to the authorities that this could pose a threat, as water finds its own way. But the authorities failed to act on the locals’ warnings.
Pauskar said his department had sent several requests to the contractor asking him to shift the pipelines before carrying out the road works. He also said the contractor had been warned that the retaining wall at Curti-Ponda was old and would not be able to sustain the weight of the mud being dumped there.
“It would have severely affected thousands of lives. If it had not rained so heavily, it would have gone unnoticed that the contractor had failed to secure the pipes,” he said.
Pauskar said the contractor would be held accountable, but was quick to add that he had assured the PWD that the pipes would be moved by December. “Yes, definitely (the contractor would be penalized), if he failed to do so (shift the pipelines by December),” he said.
“People are blaming us for not putting an immediate ad hoc solution to the crisis. But the pipes were cut off very close to the water treatment plant, so there was no possibility of connecting to an alternative pipeline. There is definitely a need for parallel lines everywhere to avoid a repeat of this situation,” Pauskar said.