Dear Editor,
Kindly permit me a space in your newspaper to highlight a sloppy road work done in Middle Road (East of Hunter Street) by a contractor of the Ministry of Public Works. At about 11:30 p.m. on 22nd Feb, 2023 in the dark of the night the contactor with his heavy machinery decided to patch up the road. Instead of making the road better they made it worse than before. They made the road slant on the southern side where there is no drainage. The drainage is at the northern side. As a result whenever it rain the water is left stagnated, nowhere to run off. Residents on this side of the road are unable to reach the road from their entrance as it is flooded with water; this sloopy work was discovered the rest day (Mashramani Day).
On the 24th Feb, 2023. I tried calling the ministry, the minister, his secretary, and the Chief Road Works Officer – what a waste of time as none of them were in office of 11 a.m. I eventually got through to the P.R.O who was very helpful in that she promised to relay my complaint to the relevant officer in charge of this road project. I sent her a video on her phone showing the volume of water on the road. Doesn’t this Ministry have an inspector to check on works done by contractor? I spoke to the PRO not less than six times only to be told that she passed my complaint along with the video I sent to the Engineer, who in turn did nothing to rectify this problem.
We are now forced to dig into our pockets to purchase builders’ waste to full up our entrances so that the water would not get into our yards, why did this incompetent contractor allowed a road to build slant on the side where there is no drainage? Isn’t this stupidity to the max? Why did this “don’t care a damn” engineer refused to rectify this problem? The Works’ minister should debar this incompetent contactor from any further contract and the engineer be replaced if he cannot function.
Sincerely,
Fazil Khan