The dream of every mo­torist to com­mute pot­hole-free roads in the coun­try is not a pie in the sky.

So says for­mer di­rec­tor of high­ways Roger Ganesh a day af­ter his suc­ces­sor Navin Ram­s­ingh told a par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee that 90 per cent of com­plaints the Min­istry of Works re­ceived were about pot­holes at­trib­uted to the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Act­ing CEO of WASA Alan Poon-King ac­knowl­edged that the au­thor­i­ty had de­vel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for dam­ag­ing roads but as­sured that new sys­tems were in place to min­imise the de­vel­op­ment of pot­holes fol­low­ing re­pair works.

Ganesh, a civ­il en­gi­neer with near­ly 50 years ex­pe­ri­ence, says fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of re­pairs to leak­ing lines crews would of­ten en­gage in shod­dy works when it came to restor­ing the road­way.

Ganesh cit­ed a re­cent in­ci­dent out­side his home.

“They came around 7 o’clock at night, dug up the road to fix a leak but to re­pair the area ex­ca­vat­ed, they just threw back all the poor ma­te­r­i­al that they dug out be­low sub­grade, stuff it back in the hole, roll the ve­hi­cle over it with­out prop­er com­paction and went their mer­ry way.”

Ganesh stressed that pot­holes and rough roads could be a jar­ring ex­pe­ri­ence which mo­torists do not have to en­dure if WASA en­gaged in the prop­er prac­tice. He said af­ter deal­ing with for­mer min­is­ters of pub­lic util­i­ties on the is­sue, the com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor was that WASA per­son­nel ac­cept­ed that restora­tion of the roads was not their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and as such no sig­nif­i­cant at­ten­tion was paid to qual­i­ty con­trol.

Ganesh said, “Once WASA fol­lows spec­i­fi­ca­tions by the high­way di­vi­sion on what ma­te­ri­als to use, how to ap­ply it and how to pre­pare the road in ad­di­tion to the polic­ing of the project then pot­holes would be a thing of the past.”