The effort to now bring safety into the ambit of players in the tourist taxi business, in addition to realistic taxi rates determined through meters, has set off its own series of problems and protests. But interestingly the very same forces who have been opposing regulation and control of the taxi business to make it tourist friendly, have joined hands to oppose the decision to have speed governors.
Firstly the taxi lobby and the politicians backing them should understand that a one sided view that any attempt to bring regulations, meters, speed governors and even radio taxis, is a hit on the concept of Goenkarponn, should perish the thought. We do not need to say it. The hundreds of thousands of comments and the sharing of experiences by tourists and locals alike, leave no room for doubt that the brand equity of Goa as a land which welcomes and nurtures tourists, is under threat. Goenkarponn is about ensuring that every tourist coming to Goa should leave with a feeling of warmth and comfort.
On the contrary many tourists leave Goa feeling cheated because of the obnoxious taxi fares. The decision to install a speed governor which will track, monitor and upload real time information about the speed of vehicles, should have found no road blocks and yet it has, with the added question asking us why Goan boys and men are being made to suffer and incur losses for installing speed governors. The answer is simple. Tracking of speeds of taxis is needed all the more, simply because of the sheer number of road deaths Goa has witnessed.
Director Transport, Nikhil Desai, is firm that the Supreme Court committee on road safety is monitoring the issue. He said that the taxi owners will have to fall in line and installation will continue adding that vehicle fitness certificates wouldn’t be issued until the governors were installed.
The protests against the installations don’t pass muster because regulating speed is the prerogative of the government. There can be an argument that this should be uniform for all vehicles and that argument can surely be taken on board and looked at seriously. But at the same time, when a Supreme Court committee is monitoring this, Goa cannot afford to defy and refuse this. And no elected representative can demand a blanket stay on the installation of speed governors, since it has been dictated and monitored by the highest court of the land.
Meanwhile the taxi association has an interesting logic when it says that the roads and traffic in the city and the State themselves act as speed breakers, so there is no need for a mechanical device. But here one needs to ask, what they mean by “city”. Goa is not city, it’s a State. It has vast stretches of empty roads, virtually devoid of traffic, including village roads. Most vehicles and this includes private ones, travel at break neck speeds. The road accident rate is a natural fallout of this.
In February 2008, nearly 5 lakh vehicles, mostly trucks, went off the Karnataka roads to protest against a Karnataka High Court order to the State government directing most categories of vehicles be fitted with speed governors.
Andhra Pradesh has opined there is need to fix speed governors rationally; Maharashtra has relied on the inbuilt safety clauses in the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988. Gujarat, meanwhile, was in sync with the decisions but wanted the rule to exempt emergency vehicles like ambulances and firefighters trucks. Meanwhile West Bengal has already green-lighted it only on its national highways. Goa can therefore take solace from the possible fact that there has been some opposition in all states.
But it’s important that all MLA, ministers and stakeholders need to agree that every possible measure, however harsh, needs to be taken now to make our roads safer.
