Road safety awareness, a bit of a joke
Yet another edition of Road Safety Week, and this paradox of awareness campaigns coexisting with accident rates, has been the trend in the goa for a long time now. Whose safety are targeting and for whom, is it for public, is it for authority or is it a farce?
Goa’s roads, along with the people who use them, have long been vulnerable, owing to a variety of reasons. The safety awareness drives have become a bit of a joke in Goa.
Traffic snarls turn acute during peak hours and indiscriminate parking of vehicles on either side of the roads and also middle of the roads in Panaji which house many commercial and government establishments, add to the woes of the public, has become the norm. Many vehicles are parked haphazardly as per their whims and fancies. Buses are stopped at the middle of the roads to drop passengers. It is fundamentally a behavioural issue that needs urgent attention. Potholes, patchy engineering make, a mockery of road safety campaign. Dug up and unrepaired patches in the state capital pose danger to commuters.
The accident rates have been on an upward trend in goa. At the ground level, traffic enforcement is unfortunately either seen as a ritual or as an exercise of authority, rather than as a preventive tool and a means to educate road users.
There are serious attitudinal problems. Mere campaigns may not be able to change it.
K G Vilop, Chorao
Eco Sensitive Areas in Western Ghats should be protected
The Goa government has reportedly recommended in a presentation to the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEF&CC) that 21 villages should be excluded from the prospective list of Ecological Sensitive Areas (ESAs) in the Western Ghats. This is reportedly being done after obtaining suggestions and objections from village panchayats.
The question to be asked is what has changed in this areas that has prompted the government to make such a recommendation. Is it being done to promote real estate development in these areas? It is pertinent to note that several village panchayats have been promoting construction activities in their respective villages by allowing deforestation and hill cutting.
A classic example is the project by Bhutani Infra which got the nod from the Sancoale panchayat after the status of ‘Private Forest’ was reverted. Eco-sensitive areas provide safe spaces for wildlife to thrive by preventing unsustainable activities and encroachments.
Conserving natural vegetation in ESAs help in climate change mitigation. It helps minimise human-wildlife conflict. It also protects the quality of surface and ground water.
In the draft notification issued by MOEF&CG, 108 villages were reportedly included in the prospective list of ESAs for Goa in the Western Ghats. These included 64 villages in North Goa and 44 villages in South Goa. Whether MOEF&CG will consider positively, Goa’s demand to exclude 21 villages from ESAs, remains to be seen.
Adelmo Fernandes, Vasco
Public appeal to
legal fraternity
We are aware of our government spending public money on annual events which are of no benefit to the people.
In the same breath, making of poor quality roads for public use has become an annual game, particularly with the PWD and its contractors, which go scot free owning no responsibility for the durability of the roads which get washed away in monsoons and are easily pot holed causing inconvenience to the general vehicular traffic.
Our public cry is, now to the legal fraternity, which is so well versed with the law and fight many legal battles to win cases, bringing relief to the affect. One understands the same problem is also faced everyday by the advocates and lawyers while on their way to different courts - be it civil, district or high court.
Why don't the legal fraternity wake up to the reality and take to task the government, particularly the PWD and its engineers, contractors to make it legally binding to provide good quality durable roads for public use.
This will save so many innocent lives lost in accidents due to poor quality roads.
Ayres Sequeira, Salvador do Mundo