Neshwin almeida
neshwin@herald-goa.com
Comba is historical and a residence too many of Margao’s original inhabitants. The Damodar Sal temple where Swami Vivekananda spend a night or for that matter the Mahila Nutan School and the Popular High School, traditional Sarvajanik Ganesh celebrations and the Diwali Narkasura celebrations, gully cricket, host to Margao’s largest college complex by the Vidya Vikas Mandal and much more is all located in Comba, a tiny ward at the edge of the town. Actually, Comba is Margao but the residents of Margao mostly senior citizens are irked with the municipality and its terrible facilities.
“The door-to-door garbage collection is terrible and so erratic. Ask the MMC authorities why the women or the truck don’t come to pick garbage and their excuses are about the traffic from the schools in the vicinity,” explains an agitated Venkatesh Dessai whose garbage has not been picked up for days and is stinking.
Similarly, Devendra Kamat shows us his building premises wherein the garbage dumped below the building includes packaging material, cartons and corrugated boxes rotting in the rain. Devendra tells us how residential flats and parking slots converted into shops are used as godowns and offices across Comba and the continuous trucks, rickshaws and the added garbage in the vicinity goes completely unchecked with the MMC doing nothing about these premises running on house taxes and running electricity and water supply on domestic charges to power their offices.
Former MMC chairperson Savio Coutinho confirms that this is a usual practice in Comba and that the current chairperson, who also functions as a pathologist out of Margao has led no drive to correct this in the area.
Our roads are blocked, the vicinity is choked with garbage, there are illegal bars and takeaway restaurants in Comba, small shops selling cigarettes all through the night, parents who block our homes when they park during school hours and nobody from the MMC to the RTO or Margao town police or maybe Margao Traffic Cell are bothered about Comba’s security or hygiene.
“The MMC has double standards and doesn’t let run an NGO to better the facilities in Margao especially in Comba. There’s very little I can say or do at this moment. Comba is ignored by this municipality only because the councillors are not a part of their panel Comba lacks a lot of facilities,” explains to us popular builder Rajendra Talak.
Umer Pagi, a senior citizen, who resides in Comba and traverses across the parallel bylanes of Comba which lay on the insides of the late Abade Faria Road explains to us that Comba is slowly losing its historical presence in Margao and the people here are harassed by the traffic, the parking, the bungalows and flats that are converted into offices and have lawyers, engineers and doctors practicing, the garbage from these establishments that finds itself in the storm water drains and the noise pollution from the miscreants and illegal tuition premises across the neighbourhood function out of shops and flats. Pagi hopes that Comba has councillors with a will to change the order and system in Comba.
