PRATIK PARAB
pratik@herald-goa.com
The Osia buildings in the SGPDA market area can be termed as the filthiest in Margao and a blot on the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan. This building, which houses the Road Transport Office, SGPDA, Commercial Taxes office, Registrar of Coop Societies and several other government offices and agencies has garbage dumped, is filthy, the toilets dirty and the walls painted red with paan spittle.
The roads leading to the SGPDA market and the Osia building are equally filthy with garbage mounds alongside and the parking area opposite the building has much uncleared garbage.
Fatorda MLA Vijai Sardesai, the then MMC Chairperson Arthur D’Silva, and several other senior officers had visited the building some time ago promising to clean it up. But over a year and a half later there has been no change.
Laurel Abranches, a frequent visitor to the offices, claims that the condition is bad and is getting worse by the day. “The condition got worst after Saras 2016 which was held on the SGPDA ground. The garbage from Saras has got scattered all over the roads,” Abranches said.
Garbage is spread all over the ground floor of the building. The first floor, which has shops, is clean to some extent. The Road Transport Office on the second floor, and visited by hundreds of people daily, has plastic water bottles dumped in corners and other places, left behind by visitors who spend hours in the office. There are also beer bottles, tins and scrap material in the toilets on the second floor. Significantly, there are signs of booze parties having taken place on this floor and almost on every other floor of the building.
Several agents who help people with filling forms at the RTO, place newspapers and plastic on the stairs to sit upon and then dump the papers and waste at the same place at the end of the day. This floor hasn’t been cleaned and the condition of the toilets is bad.
On the third floor is the SGPDA office, whose employees enter and exit the office ignoring the garbage and filth. “The building houses several government offices but nobody is bothered to change the condition,” Abranches said.
Sources said that the building developer who sold shops and offices has still not handed over control of the building to the establishment owners. This has delayed the process of forming a society, which in turn has stalled the process of keeping the building clean. There have been several attempts to get the building cleaned by forming a society but all the initiatives have failed.
