Locals in the Indian state of Maharashtra were shocked to discover that their newly-laid road was actually just a carpet with a thin layer of asphalt poured over it.

According to the Lokmat Times, the people of Karjat-Hast Pokhari, a village in Maharashtra’s Jalna district, had long been pleading with elected representatives to rebuild their poor roads, and last month, their prayers were finally answered. Or, at least, that’s what they originally thought when they saw the layer of asphalt covering their dirt roads. Only their joy was short-lived, as it soon became clear that the company in charge of the project did a very shady job, laying a very thin layer of asphalt over a carpet-like canvas that could easily be lifted from the dirt base with little effort.

A video of disgruntled locals in Karjat-Hast Pokhari criticizing the company responsible for the work and lifting up the asphalt carpet to show that the ‘road’ was ‘bogus’ has been doing the rounds on Indian Twitter for the past week. The people in the video can be heard criticizing the local contractor and calling the road ‘fake’.

The poor road was built as part of the Prime Minister Rural Roads Scheme, and the company that worked on this particular project claimed to have used the latest German technology to build the road.

 

The villagers demanded action against the contractor, the road engineers, and the concerned department for trying to fool them with this shady work that will most likely not last very long.