NESHWIN ALMEIDA
neshwin@herald-goa.com
As Margao was busy in the Ganesh Chaturthi mood, a well-known citizen of the town, Headmistress of Holy Spirit High School, Myrtle Caldeira send us pictures of vehicle owners having parked their cars on the middle of the road near Apna bazar, behind Grace Church having blocked the entire road despite three hospitals in a gap of 300 metres and the threat of people stuck in traffic jams and nobody to claim the illegally parked vehicles. Herald immediately swung into action to make a few inquiries and what revealed was shocking.
Herald called the traffic cell numerous times with no response across Sunday and Monday, only to be told that police personnel belonging to the Traffic Cell have been deputed to man parking near the Sarvajanik Ganesh Mandals across the city and there is no cop available to look into city traffic matters.
“We had a system in place of issuing challans to people for traffic and parking violations by tracking their vehicle registration numbers down and that system worked well and created a sort of fear amongst locals to not violate parking rules or traffic rules,” explains Margao Traffic Cell PI Mohan Gawade.
But Gawade asserted that this entire system of tracking down traffic violators has completely crashed for over a year because of the non-functioning of the CCTV cameras installed in Margao city and also because of the Collector’s office and MMC not taking any initiative in renewing the AMC of these cameras for over a year which stalls the work of the traffic cell.
Pritam Dsouza makes a point that the traffic cell in Margao has a mandate to collect fines but they block half the road to catch these citizens. They should instead, be patrolling the city to look into parking woes and getting people who double park to clear out the traffic. D Souza feels clearing traffic congestion and parking defaulters should be the prime focus of the traffic cell.
Meanwhile Collector IAS Anjali Sherawat pointed out that the office of the Traffic Cell is yet to follow up on the CCTV renewals and the Collector’s Office is yet to study the matter of renewing the CCTV maintenance or installing new ones.
Tito Cardozo, the Deputy Chairperson of the Margao Municipal Council, says there are too many agencies that are involved in this task “The Collector’s office owns and installs the cameras after the MMC identifies places to install them and perch them and gives the nod for installing them on various properties while the mandate to use and gather the feed for the camera is with the Traffic Cell and we’re not in favour of this system that often causes deadlock,” says Tito.
There’s help at hand though. Cardozo infirmed that the MMC has received funds under the MPLAD scheme sanctioned during the tenure of then MP Shantaram Naik, and a work order is placed to install 60 CCTV cameras across Margao city of which feed will be owned by the MMC and shared with the traffic cell and a monitoring committee will overlook traffic and other kind of violations,
But citizens like Myrtle who feel that the irregular parking is risky for senior citizens and even wounded passengers who can get stuck in snarling traffic hope that the deadlock will be broken and the city is eased of its traffic inconvenience.
