VASCO: Though the word ‘Saptah’ signifies seven-day festival, the fair which the Mormugao Municipal Council said would be forcibly removed after seven days, lasted for eleven days.
After the Saptah festival, the stall owners left behind a heap of garbage putting the residents, business houses and others to a great inconvenience. While the MMC workers slogged throughout the day to clear the garbage, little did the workers realise that there are hundreds small nails which was used to erect the stalls had fallen along St Joseph Vaz road.
This came to light when several owners of two-wheelers and four wheelers on Thursday found their vehicle tyres punctured when they were parked near Kamat Hospital. The riders/drivers were shocked when the man at the puncture shop showed them the nails which had pierced their tyres. And when they revisited the area where they had parked their vehicles, they found hundreds of nails scattered along the road where the stalls were erected.
The vehicle owners who had to face such undue hardships have accused the MMC for not directing the stall owners to clean the area before leaving the place.
“I feel that it is the fault of MMC as they failed to direct the stall owners to clean the area after dismantling their stalls. Though the municipal workers cleared all the garbage left behind by the stalls owners, they failed to clean or sweep the roads off nails, due to which many vehicles passing though the road near Kamat Hospital got punctured. Surprisingly the man at the puncture shop told me that several vehicle owners visited him in last two days for removing puncture due to nails,” said Lovino Goes, a resident of Vasco and whose car got punctured on Thursday.
Sandeep Patel, a businessman from Vasco, said, “Ironically, the nail menace is not only seen at the junction near Kamat hospital, but even at many vehicle parking areas were stalls had been erected.”
Patel feared that pedestrians may also be injured due to the scattered nails. “Hence, we urge the Council to direct their workers to sweep the roads in Vasco to avoid others facing the same problem of nail menace,” he added.
