Broken cement slabs, damaged sleepers, tilted cement railings, plastic bottles, stagnant water is the grim situation that meets the eye of passengers at the Canacona railway station, as pleas for better facilities and halt for more trains at this important station, have fallen on deaf ears allege discontented locals.
When the work commenced to construct a 741 kms rail line connecting Maharashtra and Karnataka passing through Goa, in spite of opposition from all over Goa, entire Canacona welcomed the KRC project thinking that once commissioned it would benefit the residents of Canacona. However, the way things stand, locals feel betrayed as important trains don’t make a halt here with station itself remaining neglected.
A resident of Canacona, Anil Bhagat, vents his anger on the officials of the Konkan railway, as he says that in spite of several representations for them the train running from Mangalore to Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus Mumbai does not have a stop at Canacona railway station despite being a popular tourist destination for domestic as well as foreign tourists.
We even wrote letters to the South Goa MP Narendra Sawaikar and the then railway minister Suresh Prabhu, but apart from assurances nothing has happened lamented, he lamented.
Enquiries with the station master revealed that fourteen trains make a halt at Canacona railway station on a daily basis, which cater to all of the taluka and surrounding areas with about 200 passengers getting on board and alighting from these trains.
Sometimes two trains arrive at the same time and since the station which has one platform, passengers have to alight in the middle of the tracks exposing them, especially the elderly and differently-abled to unfriendly tracks.
When questioned, the station master said they have informed the Konkan Railway Corporation Limited, headquartered at CBD Belapur in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, but have got no response yet.
In fact, locals who travel by trains emphasise that a second platform with a pedestrian overbridge is a necessity here, before something tragic happens.
Again, the KRC railway line passes close to houses at some places in the taluka and with high-speed trains with a lot of vibrations and noise. Keeping these factors in mind, locals have urged the authorities to replace prestressed concrete sleepers with recycled plastic composite sleepers in the residential localities which are long lasting and have better damping properties consequently decreasing the intensity of vibrations as well as the sound production.
There in one local train with three compartments plying between Karwar and Pernem whose timings are such that it is not useful for locals and only benefits people from Karwar who work in various industrial estates in Goa.
There is also a long-pending demand for an additional local train that ply on “important occasions ” to stop at this station as it is the only important station down south, after Margao station.
Locals spoke critically that in spite of losing large tracts of land for a pittance to construct the railway line, they are not given priority for jobs or other services like canteen at this station. In fact, they allege favouritism when a bid to run a canteen by a local was disallowed without assigning any valid reason.
