PANAJI: Union Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways General V K Singh (retd) held meeting with the Minister for Transport Mauvin Godinho and Minister for PWD Deepak Pauskar here on Friday. The objective of the meeting was to review ongoing construction work of national high way, condition of roads and improvement of road network in Goa.
Mauvin Godinho while interacting with the Union Minister said that although Goa is small state has a increase in vehicles day by day. This situation has led to traffic congestion further creating need of expansion of roads.
Besides Goa being tourist destination the increasing inflow of tourists also adds to the problem and therefore proper and safe road network is need of the hour. India has planned to achieve the target of 5 trillion economy for which he stressed on the need of full use of Mormugoa Port.
The government he said has a vision to further expand road network in Goa for which adequate financial cooperation from the Central government is required. He urged the Union Minister to consider Goa differently in comparison with the other states and be generous with regard to extending financial cooperation. He thanked the Union Minister for his visit and for showing his concern towards the road development in Goa.
General Singh in his discussion with the ministers got acquainted with the problems and issues with regard to improvement and construction of roads in Goa. He said better roads lead to greater public accessibility. In Goa he said land is less so there is pressure on land. Construction of new roads or expansion of roads, parking of vehicles would be a problem in future. Therefore he suggested to use available land properly. To solve parking problem he advocated underground and vertical parking system.
PWD Minister Deepak Pauskar while interacting brought to the notice of the Union Minister various issues with regard to expansion of roads in Goa. The increasing number of vehicle paves way for better road accessibility in Goa.
He said Goa has a vision to complete National highway with the stretch of 110 kms by the year 2021 for which he urged the minister to provide adequate fund to take up further road improvement works in the state.
Chief Engineer, Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, Government of India, Anshumali Srivastava, Principal Chief Engineer, PWD, Uttam Parsekar, North Goa Collector R Menka, South Goa Collector Ajay Roy, KTC managing director Venancio Furtado, OSD to Chief Minister Padhye, officials of PWD and transport department were present on the occasion.