Muscat: Saeed bin Salem, an Omani volunteer, has single-handedly supervised the construction of a road to connect two villages across two governorates in Oman.
Salem brought an excavator and took upon himself to provide relief to people in the mountains by shortening the distance between two villages. He successfully constructed a link road that connected the village of Halut in the mountainous Niyabat Tiwi of South Al Sharqiyah Governorate to the village of Al Oud in Wilayat of Wadi Bani Khalid in North Al Al Sharqiyah Governorate.
Travel time: 3.5 hours to 30 minutes
Once the road was connected to the villages it shortened the travel time from 3.5 hours to just 30 minutes with the travel distance of 200kms reduced to only 10 kms.
Saeed purchased the excavator with the grant he had obtained from the Sultan Qaboos Award for Voluntary Work.
The efforts definitely make an inspiring story where the concept of volunteerism is gradually picking up among the citizens and residents.
The Mountain Man
His efforts have a bit of resemblance with the work done by ‘Mountain Man of India’ on whom even a Bollywood movie ‘Manjhi - The Mountain Man’ has been released.
'The Mountain Man of India' is a real-life incident of Late Dashrath Manji, a landless farmer, who carved a path through a mountain on his own to help people of his village in the eastern state of Bihar. Manji worked on the Gehlour hills for 22 years and shortened the distance from 70kms to just 1km.