----------------------------------------------------------------- Do GOACAN a favour, circulate this email to your family members, relatives, neighbours and friends. Help others be BETTER INFORMED, The time is come for the people of Goa to ORGANISE not AGONISE !! ----------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------- Say NO to the Bus Fare Hike ---------------------------------------- The authorities are set to raise bus fares consequent on the marginal increase in diesel prices. According to press reports, a committee has been set up. What is the make-up of this committee? Does it include members of consumer organisations and the ruling coalition? Because consumers and the fortunes of the ruling parties will take a direct hit if an upward revision is agreed to.
Consumers in Goa have been reeling under ever-escalating prices and the image of the ruling combine is bruised by public squabbling and a poor performance on all fronts. Allowing a price increase will set in motion a dangerous spiral in inflation levels and will confirm the public perception of the government as pandering to all sorts of lobbies at the cost of the common man. Is there a mechanism in place to determine the price of tickets? Or like most things in Goa is it arbitrary, purely depending on the Transport Lobby's ability to satisfy the powers that be? Is our public transport functioning according to the Motor Vehicles Act? This Act alongwith the Motor Vehicle Rules mandates among other things that: 1.A fare table and route should be displayed. 2.A destination Board should be displayed 3.An Emergency Exit be provided. 4.Tickets should be issued to all passengers. 5.Fire extinguisher and First Aid Box be provided 6.The Driver & Conductor should be licensed, in clean livery, and wearing badges. In Goa, most of the buses do not display the fare table and route. Many buses including KTC do not display Destination Boards The Emergency exit is meaningless as it can never be opened. In an emergency, passengers are extricated by breaking the windows or remain trapped till cranes are brought. If they die in the meanwhile that's too bad. Are tickets issued to bus passengers? I've almost never got one except on KTC! Earlier buses did carry Fire Extinguishers and First Aid boxes, now we hardly see them. I they are there, the contents are beyond the expiry date and therefore useless. Many drivers are not licensed for driving public vehicles. Conductors most often are unlicensed, dirty-smelling, foul-mouthed street urchins who miss no opportunity to brush against lady passengers. They only hurriedly shrug into filthy, crumpled, khaki shirts when accosted by MV inspectors and don't display badges simply because an astonishingly 90% of them are not licensed! They prefer to pay the token fine. Besides this, most buses are vastly overloaded, have frequent breakdowns, do not adhere to timings and are not averse to running private marriage and other trips leaving route passengers stranded. Often after lunch drivers and conductors stink of alcohol. The vastly over-priced KTC shuttles are probably the worst maintained as on any given day at least three breakdown on the Margao-Panaji route putting passengers to grave inconvenience. It is because of this resultant bad public transport system that Goans even those who can ill afford it, are forced to use personal transport adding to traffic congestion, pollution and impoverishment of the middle class. The Congress-NCP alliance has come to power on promises of caring for the Aam Admi. Allowing an upward revision when the per passenger km increase in fuel works out to not even One paise, would be profiteering and exploitation of the worst kind of the common man and totally unjustified. When you consider that fares are fixed on the basis of bus capacity, and when we see grossly over-loaded buses which are making super-normal profits for their operators, this less than one-paise per passenger km increase can easily be absorbed. In any case no increase should be allowed until the operators abide by the provisions of the MV Act. Yours truly, Xavier Cota Betalbatim, Goa 403713 Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- GOA CIVIC AND CONSUMER ACTION NETWORK --------------------------------------------------------------------------- promoting civic and consumer rights in Goa --------------------------------------------------------------------------- GOACAN Post Box 187 Margao, Goa 403 601 GOACAN Post Box 78 Mapusa, Goa 403 507 Tel: 2252660 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] website: www.goacan.org --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.11.14/131 - Release Date: 10/12/2005