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A chaotic government, Goa style!
By Valmiki Faleiro
I salute the people who blocked the Zuari Bridge, Friday morning. A chaotic
government understands no other language. Six ferryboats were to be in place
by 6.00 a.m., June 16. Newspapers had cautioned that ferry ramps were slippery.
The administration announced the bridge's partial closure on Tuesday. There
was abundant time to get the act together - organize KTC four-wheelers, the
ferries, even to scrub the ramps clean (or, as a wag said, the option to post
ambulances on either side!)
Looks like we still live in an age where one department of the same government
does not know what the other is doing. How else does one explain dropping
people by lonely riverbanks, with no conceivable means to get to the other
side?
Ferry service is run by the River Navigation Department, headed by the Captain
of Ports. The present incumbent, ex facie, is an irresponsible officer. Rane
ought to have ordered his suspension much before some ferries eventually
arrived at 11 a.m. and ferry crew began cleaning the ramps. (Suspension, it
may be recalled, is nothing new to Capt. Mascarenhas. He was suspended for the
dubious purchase of a winch. I learn there are enough charges at the Vigilance
Dept. to warrant not just suspension, but an eventual discharge from service.)
Goa is famous for unequalled parallels ... except for a parallel government;
we have parallel bridges over the Mandovi, parallel water pipelines from
Selaulim and the parallel Zuari Bridge long hanging fire.
The Opposition Leader's charge: the file pertaining to a parallel Zuari bridge
has been suppressed for extraneous reasons since 2003. By the selfsame man who
held, and holds, the PWD portfolio. Will Government or the Congress party, or
the MGP, to which the minister belongs, come clean on an allegation as
Himalayan as this?
And pray, why should a bridge with the width of the Zuari, take three years to
build? Reminds me of an anecdote. As Staff Reporter of an erstwhile daily
owned by a mining house, I was asked to interview the visiting President of
the biggest Japanese buyer of Goan ore. At Dabolim, the President invited me
into his car, so I could interview him en route to Panjim.
The Zuari bridge was then under construction. In the ferry, the President
said, "Let's get a breath of fresh air" and alighted from the car. He saw work
on the bridge and asked, "When's this bridge getting ready?" In about two
years if all goes well, I told him. Transparently incredulous, he said "Two
YEARS? When did it start?" I told him, about nine years before.
The man just shook his head, sideways. "Young man," he said, "in Japan we
built a five kms. undersea railway tube between two islands, in three years."
It's not that Goa lacks Rs.220 crore to get a Norwegian or Japanese firm build
a bridge in three months. The truth reflects off an adage of our wise
ancestors. We'll think of a bridge not when we come to a river, like we will
think of digging a well only when we feel the thirst ("Tan lagtori, baim
marpachi!") (ENDS)
The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at:
http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330
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The above article appeared in the June 18, 2006 edition of the Herald, Goa
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