There is something very incongruous and very unbelievable here. We are in the year 2015, in a State that basks in the glory of awards for its high standards and development indices, a State that distributes free laptops to students and promotes itself as a luxury tourist destination. Yet, in a not so remote corner of the State, some of its sons and daughters have to wade through a river to reach to school. Yes, in our developed Goa, children in school uniform have to hold their shoes in their hands and walk across a river to get to their school. And it’s not just children, but adults too who have to walk through river waters.
This happens in Goa’s southernmost taluka of Canacona, where residents of Galgibaga and Maxem have either of two options – either cross the River Galgibaga by wading into its waters, or climb up to the railway bridge and walk along the railway tracks. If they want to cross the river over the only existing bridge, they have to take a 15-km long detour. So they have to opt for the next best option, which is of wading through water or walking across the railway bridge, both risky.
Students walk to school all over Goa. Some of them even a few kilometers. But that 53 years after Liberation some children have to wade through a river to reach school is a shame. Any government should have taken up this issue on a priority and ensured that the villagers were given access to the other bank of the river, that it hasn’t happened is an indication of just how lopsided have been the priorities of the successive governments of the State.
Is a third bridge over the River Mandovi at Panjim more important than this footbridge? Is the proposed airport at Mopa a more pressing concern than a bridge over the river Galgibaga? Is the International Film Festival a bigger priority than the lives of these people?
A few weeks back a former sarpanch of Loliem-Polem, Agnes Afonso, died when a train hit her as she was using the railway bridge to cross the river. She was on her way to early morning mass. This was not the first death on this stretch of the railway line. This death brought the issue back into focus. Not that the villagers of Galgibaga and Maxem have ever let it die down, it is just that the ears of those in power have not been tuned to these demands. Promises of building a bridge have been made but not a single government has kept the promise and so the residents of these two villages have to still walk through water.
All that the residents of the village are asking for is a footbridge to take them across the river, but even that they haven’t got. They don’t need a motorable bridge as this will increase traffic through the village, which they don’t want. There are boat services to ferry them but when the tide is out, the people have to still walk on the marshy land and tread through water to get to the boats. The villagers have also turned down the boat services as they have found the fibre boats unsafe as the vessels shake much while travelling across the river. They will be satisfied with just a footbridge.
A day after Herald published a picture of children wading through the water, a team from the Public Works department led by an executive engineer visited the area to inspect the site for a footbridge. They didn’t promise the villagers anything, other than to say they had made an ‘official visit’.
That is the pace at which and the manner in which the government works. A site inspection is expected to keep the people happy. This is one construction that the government must take up immediately. You can’t leave the residents of two villages waiting for years for a footbridge. They surely have the right to cross the river without getting their feet wet and the government the duty to ensure that the people don’t risk their lives every time they have to cross River Galgibaga.
