NESHWIN ALMEIDA
neshwin@herald-goa.com
MARGAO: Margao often faces an issue of jurisdiction and with who the fault lays. And one such area of jurisdiction and where the fault lies is at the Kadamba Bus Stand, Margao.
One aspect is how in 2011, the then Chief Minister Digambar Kamat commissioned a new bus stand and complete renovation of the Bus Stand but subsequently two governments of the Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and the government of Laxmikant Parsekar seemed to have failed to implement this project which is sometimes seen as a political jeopardy by Digambar’s opponents.
“The project was launched to create, a depot, a waiting area, a shopping zone for tourists who await for interstate buses and most importantly to focus on hygiene and sanitation which means providing people cleaning eating spaces and clean toilets at the bus stop but sadly the entire project is on hold and people are suffering, explains the former CM Digambar kamat.
While the current TCP Minister, Vijai Sardessai assures us that a state of the art bus stand will be built soon but he wants to study the feasibility of the bus stand and its load and capacity avoiding a white elephant in the city.
“The problem of infrastructure and the bus stand is one aspect but part of the bus stand on the back portion is used as an interstate bus stop for buses plying to Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and other parts of Goa and the real problem of security, garbage, migrants, defecating and bathing lies here and there seems to be a huge problem that’s not addressed by any authorities,” explains Herman Fernandes.
Herman, who parks his vehicle at the back portion in the pay parking area, is upset that civilians pay parking fee while the commercial interstate buses have no fees to pay for utilizing the space while their customers and passengers completely misuse the area.
“There are buses till about 8 am and then it’s a dark area, with no proper lighting and its misused by locals to drink, smoke, abuse drugs, sometimes it’s a pick up point for prostitutes and the darkness of the area is misused to park cars and solicit sex workers while all this goes unnoticed,” stated Remy Pereira, who’s even had an issue with the shops located here and sell spoilt or stale food and is unchecked by FDA officials.
“The problem is that the government land used for the interstate bus stop or rather land allotted for these buses to avoid traffic congestion in other parts of Margao Town but this land is fully managed by Kadamba Transport and besides discharge of sewage, nothing beyond that is our concern and hence the municipality cannot do mush here unless there is a sewage, explains Deputy Chairperson of the Margao Municipality, Tito Cardozo.
While Civil engineer Gurudas Naik from the KTCL explains to us that KTC is only managing the property and trying to provide basic amenities but all aspects of rebuilding the bus stand or even looking into issues of this interstate bus stand is at the hands of the Department of transport since the land no doubt is managed by KTC but is on lease from the department of transport who are the original owners of that land.
While again the Margao Town on the issue of migrants and anti-social activities explains to us that the bus stand now lies in the jurisdiction of the newly conceptualized and functional Fatorda Police Station and hence his force is not responsible for anything at the Bus Stop.
“After 8 pm there is no activity on that property since interstate and intercity buses also slow down or cease on all routes. Verification of migrants is difficult because it’s a moving crowd that travels in and out of the State. We do our best to patrol and send our vehicles thrice at night and try to keep a tab on any activity in that open space. We have even made arrests; issued warnings if we find people there in the wee hours but it’s not always possible to look into these issues,” said Fatorda Police Inspector Navlesh Desai.
