Panjim: (TOI) Times News Network
June 28, 2009
The state government has requested the Central Road Research Institute, New
Delhi, to prepare a comprehensive traffic and transportation study for Goa.
Chief minister Digamber Kamat told the media on Saturday that a CRRI team
will begin their study in Goa in October 2009, submit a preliminary report
with short-term measures by March 2010 and a final report with measures to
last till 2030 by December 2010.
Kamat reminded that the government had constituted a task force and declared
2008 as the year of the road so as to address the problem of road accidents
in the state. Kamat said, "The government saw that road accidents are on the
rise. A message has to go out that the government is serious about reducing
accidents in Goa. We therefore need a comprehensive road traffic and
transportation study for Goa.
Comments:
As much as we agree that something drastic has to be done to save lives on
the our killer roads, we do not believe that CRRI will be able to help much
in Goa, where the will of the government is lacking. If at all, this will be
another fruitless study/research, the recommendations of which will be
collecting dust in the corners of the respective offices of the authorities
concerned, to be jettisoned out of the windows after each elections and
change in governments or the transport ministers. The basic problem is that
the ordinary traffic policeman is a zombie who does not know the rules of
the road, and even if he knew, does not bother to correct the violators with
or without fines. It is a permissive society where roads are free for all.
If a conscious citizen takes it on himself to correct/advise the gross
violator, he takes the brunt through abuses. Therefore one does not want to
bother with these things even if people died on the roads like flies. If
this is not frustrating, we don't know what is.
Mr. Digamber Kamat has come up with a novel way of passing the buck on to
the CRRI's shoulders for him to say to the world "What can I do? CRRI is
entrusted with the job of safeguarding the lives of Goans on the roads" and
go about doing what he is doing best. If there was half the intension to
stop the killings on the road, Digamber Kamat would have stripped the RTO
off its pants and paraded it in the public, naked, for all to see. Alas !
How can that be done when lacs have changed hands to dish out the job to
the RTO? Who is going to stop that?
If Digamber Kamat is serious about governance in Goa, he will take time to
go through the already prepared versatile Road Map for Goa by the Goa
Su-Raj Party with its elaborate chapter VII on Public Transport & R.T.O. at
Page 57 and seriously take the suggestion that Road Marshalls be appointed
from among the more conscious citizens to supplement the Traffic Police
force.
At best, Digamber Kamat will do well to sack every drunken driver of the
Kadamba Transport Corporation, to start with.
floriano
goasuraj
