NESHWIN ALMEIDA
neshwin@herald-goa.com
Go to the back of the Margao municipality and walk down the old fish market road which is a hub to pick up masons and labour. A little over 200 metres away lays a shanty of homes which have been in existence since 1952 and has tripled with migrants over the years. Definitely a vote bank for the local councillor Damodar Naik and the Margao MLA Digambar Kamat for many years but the slum are at neglect and at its worst in terms of sanitation.
Maruti Baba, sitting with his cup of tea, explains, “Since this place is better known for the Cine Lata theatre, people refer to this area as the Cine Lata Slum, which now has an aerial view because of the new two-wheeler bridge that crosses over the slum dwelling and gives you a peak at the pathetic condition we live in.”
Maruti, a retired Margao municipality worker whose mother also worked in the municipality in pre-India times, explains how this open space was used by migrant municipal workers to set up small dwellings and hence became a home to migrants along the railway track. Now they’re kids and many more migrants who made room for themselves with the municipality and police unable to keep a check on the encroachments.
Acquired from a private party this land is supposed to connect Colva circle via Comba to Margao for a direct ring road to exit into Navelim but due to the encroachments and slums, this has not been possible.
Meetha, who grew up in this same slum and is now a mother of two and moved into a smaller dwelling with husband, explains to Herald how there are gutters built that pass through their slum and the sewage is choked and rotting and malaria, dengue and typhoid is very common amongst the people in the slum.
“They took all our names when they acquired the land and we’re aware of a proposed ring road but our rehabilitation and compensation is not sorted and all we’re asking till then give us hygienic conditions to live in. So near to the municipality and they can’t even clean our gutters. We feel much betrayed for all the politicians who we vote for,” explains Meetha.
Tulsi Bi from the same slum explains how the gutters were cleaned during the election campaign and before in 2015 during campaign of municipal election but otherwise it’s the same thrash, sewage and rats, that enter their houses when these gutters get clogged in the monsoons.
“Water and electricity connections are given and recently toilets were built and we decided to keep those for our women folk, we asked for another set of toilets for men but only promises were made and not built. The men for so many years go and defecate along the railway track and so many have died in the dark, getting mangled in the track and trains. It’s sad that despite us working in homes and providing labour to this city, nobody values us just because we’re slum dwellers and poor,” explains Kamlesh another resident whose kids go to a nearby Balwadi school.
Kamlesh explains how in massive buses and Sumos they’re taken to nearby Fatima School to vote as vote banks but when they complain of mosquitoes and stagnant water then diluted phenyl is sprayed in their slum dwellings instead of carrying out proper fumigation which municipal workers carry out in massive housing societies in Margao, Fatorda, Aquem and Borda.
Scrubbing their clothes in the evening and balancing it with their schooling is the lives of the little girls of Cine Lata slums while the parents are working as domestic help and masons and the little boys play with metal scrap along the railways tracks. The entire Margao town is their playground and the entire city pears over this slum daily.
But the slum dwellers of Cine Lata want one payment for their votes — a clean slum.
