braving the rain in absence of a shed waiting to board a bus to reach their destination on time, but it seems nothing much has changed.
Recently, on September 14, I reached the bus stand around 7:35 am, a little late but up to a horrible shock, I was greeted by the longest line of the shuttle route which stretched right outside the bus stand almost where the motorcycle pilots wait and just kept increasing.
This along with heavy rains only made it worse, almost 25 minutes passed, the line hardly moved, but as the clock ticked and time moved ahead, it became 8 o’clock and seeing the weather and urgency to reach college on time, I was forced to return home braving the rain on my bike and take my personal car all the way to college so as to avoid reaching late and getting low attendance.
What I would like to highlight here is if we are going to use our own personal transport to go to our colleges and offices than what is the state run Kadamba Transport Corporation for? We often hear a lot about increasing pollution levels, increasing traffic and congestion leading to accidents on the roads. The state transport is supposed to give commuters and college students a fast, reliable and safe transport so that people can rely on the buses to reach our destinations timely and safely and use the bus transport to go to their destinations rather than their personal transport.
There’s been a rumour doing rounds that KTCL is getting 20 big buses for its operations soon, but the passengers need more as even 20 buses will not be enough unless there are a dedicated fleet of buses which will ply only during peak hours on shuttle routes especially once again the Tata Ultra buses.
We often get big promises which come only during elections but ground reality never happens. Youngsters and college students are the ones who decide the fate of politicians who are incompetent and cannot solve public grievances. The chairman of KTCL, Mr Carlos Almeida had said that he would personally visit the bus stand in Margao and take stock of the situation after August 15 but it’s almost mid September and nothing has changed, nor has he showed up at the bus stand.
I would now like to request the Transport Minister Mr Sudin Dhavalikar and senior KTCL officials to personally visit the Margao bus stand in the mornings especially Mondays between 7.05 am to 8.20 am on an urgent basis and take stock of how passengers are suffering and resolve the matter of the passengers and the pass holders who are made to face the wrath of the rain when there is a shed erected in the bus stand and ensure smooth flow of traffic in the mornings and evenings at the shuttle counters in Margao and Panjim bus stands respectively.
