The entire city of Panaji which includes our Ribandar is in an absolute mess. The roads have been recklessly and haphazardly dug with inadequate safety precautions, and no planning and contingency plan in place for the delays in restoring the roads to normality. Regrettably, the roads in such poor state and desperately needing repair have instead been turned to despair and a dangerous eyesore.
The not so smart Panaji MLA and his son the mayor are solely responsible for this sheer chaos and grave hardship that the residents and those visiting the capital city have been enduring. And now the mayor who has awoken late in the day says that the performance of the contractors needs to be audited. It was obvious to anyone that the contractors were given a blank cheque to do what they liked unsupervised, to dig road after road without completing one road before starting the next within agreed timescales. Are the authorities not aware that the contractors and their works are very substandard while the loot and plunder of the State coffers is underway in the name of making Panaji a Smart City? Infact it is all a daylight theft emptying the State coffers.
With the monsoons just three months away, one can imagine what the city will go through. The MLA and the Mayor have a lot to explain as to how they have carelessly allowed the city to reach its current despicable state with dug up roads and dust all over with people especially the elderly facing the brunt of this reckless pollution.
Having let the city down, the MLA and Mayor need to hang their heads in shame, apologize and resign immediately for having taken our city to a state of despair where every road and even footpaths have become treacherous and accident prone. Let others smarter than them take responsibility for restoring our roads and footpaths. Allowing unscrupulous, incompetent politicians and contractors to hand in glove drain our coffers in the name of a Smart City initiative that has destroyed our city and driven its people needlessly to despair, stress and anxiety is an unforgivable crime.
