Bundles of RTO documents, certificates, papers and identity proofs were dumped on the Merces-Old Goa bypass. Some of these were partially burnt in a massive fire at RTO office situated at Kadamba Bus stand earlier this month.
The callously discarded crucial documents were enough to explain how serious the authorities are in handling public information. After issuing a clarification that the act was unknowingly done by the labourers who were roped in to clean the almost destroyed office premise, it was cleared off from the roadside.
This instance is also a classic example on how the bypass is being misused as a new dump yard.
Locals claim that RTO documents incident is not the only case, as some pockets of the new bypass and the service lanes are covered with waste. “The sides of the road are actually decorated with garbage,” ridiculed a local Tinu Soraya, who is a regular passerby from this stretch for his freelance work in Panjim.
He claimed that most often the pockets of the stretch are filled by dry waste including plastic and glass bottles. “It is mostly along the construction sites, which is just a few meters away from the main road,” Soraya added.
Another motorist Iva Rodrigues too echoed the observation by Soraya, demanding that the concerned government agency manning the maintenance of the road should come down heavily on the violators. She asked the government not to take its mission on making Goa garbage-free by 2020 year, lightly.
“The government should start taking its initiative seriously. By merely holding Swacch Bharat Abhiyaan camps for a certain period and then forgetting it will not do. The government should come down heavily on the violators. Let there be CCTV cameras all over which will not only act as safety measures but also help identify those dirtying the public places,” she said.
Meanwhile an official from the PWD, on condition of anonymity, said: “The PWD will be going through all its proposals to check about maintaining cleanliness along the roadside.”
