Apropos to the Herald Pg 1 story of April 30, 2015, titled,‘Margao, Navelim residents irked over delayed bills’ by Team-Herald. It was an excellent bit of reporting and hats off to Margao’s journalist-activist, Cedric da Costa for taking the lead to highlight the sad plight of Margao’s and Aquem-Alto’s power consumers. Also, congratulations to Navelim Civic Forum’s Joseph Vaz for taking up this issue of delayed power bills and the short deadline to repay the same.
Salaried citizens of Margao get one salary per month and now the power department expects them to pay six months bills within a single salary which is not only absurd but highly obnoxious in today’s era of constant price rise of basic essential commodities ushered by the BJP Govt.
The insensitive electricity department has put the common man to grave hardships and the citizens tolerated the power department even as they failed to issue monthly electricity bills and now when the time comes to repay those long pending bills, the electricity department engineers are acting tough and rude with the power consumers, and are unwilling to even extend the repayment deadline by a week so that the salaried citizen can accommodate at least one bill in the successive salary. What sort of callousness is this by the Government and the electricity departent?
I salute the Herald and the citizens of Margao and Navelim for confronting the electricity department officials, but wish the unresponsive government could extend the repayment dates or waive off the late fees. The Govt wants to put itself in a win-win situation but wants to tax the common man with all the hardships and they want them to suffer for their sins of inability to effectively run the electricity department.
A big shame to the Margao Congress MLA DigambarKamat who is in total compromise with the flip flop ruling BJP Government to hide his own sins of corruption and is totally mum or in compromise to the evils that the Government is ushering upon the citizens of Margao under the lackluster BJP rule.
Today, the citizens like Cedric da Costa have to take it up on themselves to fight for justice to the suffering people of the commercial capital, Margao.
The cautioning of power thefts and constant blackouts to the electricity engineers and the raising of issues of power and water tariff hike is also appreciated as nobody has dared to question the Govt on this issue. We need more citizens like these to take up for the people against a tyrant Government.
The electricity department functioning is come under sever questioning and the electricity department engineers (mostly non Goan) do not have any people’s skills and are mostly consumer unfriendly and rude.
We look forward towards more expose of the way the electricity department is functioning by the Herald-Margao and citizens leaders.
It is time to show the Government that the citizens of Margao have woken up.
