Finally, 3.5km motorable road to Vavurla gives hope a connection

Margao: Vavurla — an entirely tribal hamlet of a 300-odd strong population, perched atop the forested hills of Quepem that successive govts forgot existed — is connected to the world at last.After years of isolation that cost lives, the 3.5km road linking Vavurla to Kude is complete and motorable. For the first time in the village’s history, a vehicle can drive in and drive out — with the sick, the elderly, a woman in labour — without four neighbours straining under a chair that doubled as a stretcher.TOI was the first to highlight the plight of the village in May 2015, and since then relentlessly stressed the need to mainstream its tribal residents year after year, through govts that came and went and promises that evaporated.The human cost of that stalling was real. On Aug 15, 2019 — Independence Day — Govind Velip suffered a cardiac arrest in the village. Four neighbours carried him 3.5km down the forest path on a makeshift stretcher to the nearest motorable road, then 15km to the primary health centre at Canacona, and onwards to GMC, Bambolim. He did not make it. His death certificate recorded cardiac arrest. Vavurla knew what had really killed him.

Velip was not the first. For years, chairs were pressed into service as stretchers. Students threaded their way through thick forest each morning to reach school. Pregnant women were carried down slopes in the dark.Quepem MLA Altone D’Costa, in whose constituency Vavurla falls, called the completion a milestone long overdue. “This is a big achievement and a big relief for the people of Vavurla. The doors are now wide open — to healthcare, to education, to everything the rest of us take for granted.

For the first time, Vavurla has access to the world,” he said. “I am glad that happened on my watch.”Launched on Dec 27, 2023, and awarded at over Rs 2 crore following a single-tender bid, the road construction project stalled repeatedly for various reasons — forest department objections, landslides undoing completed stretches and cost overruns that pushed deadlines beyond the original one-year window.A public grievance filed by Margao resident Sanjay Dessai, routed through the PMO to Goa’s PWD hierarchy, returned with a single line from the assistant engineer’s office in Canacona: “Road passes through forest land and no NOC is available from the forest department.”

The file made a full circle. Vavurla had not moved an inch.Now, finally, Vavurla has got the road.“An ambulance can come here now,” said Vavurla resident Manju Velip, relief writ large on his face. “The sick no longer have to be carried out on makeshift stretchers. That is all that we were waiting for.”Dessai said: “Development should be people-centric. Permissions for tree-felling for mining are granted readily, land is reclaimed openly for jetty construction — but when it comes to providing basic facilities for a few voiceless people, every objection under the sun surfaces. This simply shouldn’t happen.”