Team Goemkarponn
CANACONA: Following bitter complaints from local residents of Agonda and Khola, the over 50 years old Saleri bridge on Saleri river, joining Agonda-Khola on MDR-49 road, was inspected by government Engineers and Consultant Team on Monday.
This bridge is consistently under used especially with heavy traffic and traffic related tourism is under threat of collapse at any time, and residents have been complaining ever since the bridge started to show cracks in its underneath pillars and side concrete slabs, more so the bridge has sinked a little on Khola side, showing some deep widening cracks over the bridge itself.
The PWD engineers and a Consultancy team inspected the bridge over and went underneath on a canoe on Monday.
People were complaining that the government is not doing anything as the bridge looks to be sinking, and were blaming the government that authorities are waiting for a disaster to befall.
Many people have orally approached authorities, besides a few including one Jairam C Pagi of Saleri –Khola have written to the Dy. Collector and Mamlatdar of Canacona, requesting for quicker action on the genuine demand, anticipating to avoid any umimaginable and unfortunate incident.
This important link bridge was built over 50 years ago, joining the two important villages in Canacona’s northern-end Agonda and Khola was inaugurated by the late Chief Minister Smt. Shashikala Kakodkar. The two villagers share many common aspects and both villages are co-related with each other’s economy as well as religious events. “The State’s important link road MDR-49 now under heavy usage not only during tourism season, but this link road comes handy when NH-66 traffic is diverted via this road, whenever any road blockade of NH66 between Padi and Karmalghat takes place.
According to locals though the bridge is very old and built for minimal traffic which however has increased over the period of time, has never been repaired nor taken care off is also suddenly gone down and is slowing giving away, posing a great threat of collapse any time
Visu Kholkar, Bhushan Kholkar, Melvyn Fernandes, and a few others were present, while the team was inspecting the bridge.
