If we step back from the emotional pot boiler that Velim has become and look into the manner in which the confidence of the public in the police and the government machinery is fast eroding, the larger take away from the Velim incident will be visible.
If it is Velim today, it was Cuncolim yesterday and could be Vasco tomorrow and Vagator the day after. The state of policing and law and order is one part of the problem. At the same time there has been absolutely no effort by the government in general and the paramedics and the police in particular to link health services and the police as one homogeneous unit. This is not Velim’s issue alone. The ambulance system, the trained paramedics and the police which is supposed to respond to accidents, often doubling up as medical rescuers, work as three independent and disconnected arms in the eco system with no synergy. The golden hour, when adhered to from the time of the accident to the time from the first round of medical aid and care is administered, can save lives. In Goa, the response time has reached farcical proportions, that it takes over an hour for the first sign of help to arrive at the spot of the accident.
What happened in Velim on Thursday night when a young man in his twenties was knocked down by a jeep, he was chasing, was typical of what normally happens on Goa’s roads. The jeep was involved in a hit and run and the boy decided to chase it down, when the rogue driver of the jeep knocked him down. According to locals, the ambulance did not arrive on time and nor did the police.
This story has been repeating itself too often on our roads and when increasingly frustrated locals have reacted, as they did in Cuncolim and now in Velim, the police instead of being conciliatory has been intimidating. If a lathi charge was resorted to in Cuncolim, additional forces were deployed in Velim.
The confrontation between the public and police has led to zero-tolerance towards police inefficiency and inaction. At the same time we should ask, is this really all about the police. On the face of it yes, but the root of such angst is really the absence of any reactive post accident intervention mechanism which does the simple job of getting an accident victim to hospital quick enough for him to survive.
Meanwhile the once upon a time efficient 108 ambulance system is in the throes of inefficiency with hardly any trained paramedics or enough vehicles to cover the state. The police stations are even worse. Many police stations do not have vehicles for their routine law and work and therefore cannot respond to accident situations by sending a team immediately to the spot. A beginning can be made by creating a fully equipped quick response team consisting of paramedics, the police, nursing, first aid staff with a pool of doctors who are on call in each block. The doctor nearest to the accident site can then rush to aid the quick response team.
At the back end, every primary health care centre should be equipped to handle at least the first stage of treatment. These centres should also have trained doctors, who can take over from the mobile doctors, a mini blood bank and a makeshift operation theatre.
All this has not happened not because the state does not have funds. It has not happened because our ministers and officers, in every department of the government has reduced governance to sanctioning mammoth multi-crore – mainly construction – projects, with no thought and visionary leadership.
Therefore there are more Velims waiting to happen on a daily basis.
