Galle Road chaos: Who ‘s digging for what?

The Wellawatte stretch of Galle Road is being dug up more and more on all four sides – that is on both sides of both lanes! There seems to be work going on at snail’s pace. With no completion in sight, more and more digging takes place amid more and more inconvenience to pedestrians and the motorists, but then who cares?

The traffic is almost at standstill most of the time with nonstop blaring of horns and three quarter of the road being taken up for repairs; no one seems to know what the repair is about and when and how it is going to be completed.

Can someone tell the long suffering silent majority of citizens why cannot they do the work at small laps of stretches from one end and finish before going onto the next lap? Why didn’t someone think of doing one lane first and the other one later so that at least the people could have used one lane for traffic? Why not close the huge holes in one stretch before digging up the next one? Why not let the workers do the repairs at night and let them rest during daytime and make the traffic flow a little easier? Why not employ a larger number of labourers and complete the work in shorter period? Why not leave completing the middle divider between the two lanes to a later time and finish the constructions at the sides first? Why not at least lay the concrete slabs properly even if cementing or tarring is to be done later? Why, why oh why not?

Who is in charge? Who is supervising this if at all? Is this the only way to do it?

We were told it will be finished before the CHOGM starts. The CHOGM has come and gone but the chaos has not abated. Only “sogam” (sadness in Tamil) seems to be remaining for Wellawatte!

Dehiwala