Kendrapada, November 12 (Odisha.in) It seems straight out of the Dilip Kumar, starrer Hindi movie “Naya Daur” in the 1960s wherein villagers, on their own initiative, build a ‘Pucca’ road singing “Saathi Haat Milana(Friends, joins hands).
The students and teachers of evening college in Kendrapada, may have not seen the movie, but have done something similar.
In an amazing display of unity and enterprise, the students and teachers have joined their hands and repaired the pothole -littered 500 meter long earthen road in village Chanuchnia 15 km from Kendrapada recently after working uninterruptedly for ten days , at virtually no cost.
At least 45 students and four teachers of the college spent ten days in the village during the Puja holiday and built the road in a special camp of NSS students.
“To tackle the bad condition of the road, the students and teachers volunteered to devote three hours for ten days to construct the road”, said Dilip Kumar Mohanty the programme officer of (National Service Scheme) NSS unit of the college.
“We umpteen times urged the authority to repair the road. But they did not pay any heed to it . But thanks to the works of the students and teachers the villagers got a good road road”, said Damador Sahoo a school teacher of Chanchinia.
Villagers were facing lot of problems particularly in rainy season due to bad condition of the road. In rainy season the villagers used to walk on the road in knee deep water, said Sarbeswar Pradhan a villager.
“I told the students to build the roads and they accepted the challenge and completed the road repair works within ten days. Many villagers have also extended their helping hands to build the road”, said Ajaya Kumar Biswal the principal of the college.
“Normally, if the road construction work was given to a government listed contractor, the road would have cost about two lakh”, said Rabindra Das an engineer of Roads and Building department of Kendrapada.
A beaming Ajaya Kumar Biswal the principal of the college said the road will bring relief to the villagers as the villagers were facing problems to use the road in rainy season. A little downpour from the sky made the road inaccessible to the villagers as the road was littered with hundreds of potholes.
“We never felt tired and worked continuously to build the road” said Satyabrata Das a student of the college.”Many villagers provided shovels and other instruments to dig earth. We covered the road with earth and put morum on the road and raised the height of the road about one feet”, said Madhusudan Kamila a teacher of the college.
Apart from the building the road, the students have also cleared weeds from a village pond, planted 300 saplings and organized health camps with the help from the doctors of government hospital.
Odisha.in