Destructive road
The Miramar - Dona Paula road is still under repairs and vehicular traffic, is diverted to the old inner road, which is getting congested. It is found that the PWD workers have cut the roads across to give connection to individual housing and that the cutting is done in large quantity of 60 to 75 cuts approximately across the road, between St Francis Chapel to Aivao Village crossing junction, which has become an headache for the drivers. First people suffered a lot on account of sewage and now on account of cutting of the road. Tyres of all vehicles especially of two wheelers are getting damaged.
Why the PWD has not taken up for repairs of these cuts by asphalting or cementing? Who is responsible for this job?
Stephen Dias, Dona Paula
Failed policy
Almost all Marathi schools owe their existence to the government policy of the 60s. Goans themselves did not favour Konkani as a medium of instruction; most preferred English or Marathi. The medium-of-instruction controversy is unexpected fallout of the High Court ruling in November, 1987, which stated that teachers in all private, non-aided primary schools would have to be paid salaries at par with government school teachers.
Three months later, The Tenth All India Konkani Writer’s Conference, held in Pernem, on February 17 and 18, 1990, passed a resolution that the Goa government should take steps to impart pre-primary and primary education only in the mother tongue, Konkani, and that no grants be given to private schools that harm children by thrusting on them primary education in alien languages, especially English.
Absence of financial assistance from the government was acceptable so long as the management of the private schools was not compelled to pay their staff at government scales. The managements of Catholic schools in Goa were the most affected by the government’s policy. Over forty per cent of the children in primary schools studied in English medium in 1989“90. No government since 1990 has attempted to re-examine and redraft the policy lest it stir up a hornet’s nest. Whatever the outcome of the medium-of-instruction controversy, the voice of the people seems to have been throttled as the policy ignored the educational reality of the time, and struck a death blow to the very schools that were most popular in the state.
Amar Kantak, Margao
Festive pricing
The prices in hotels and other places always go up during a long weekend. This doesn’t always happen at many tourist places. Locations like Bali, Malaysia and Thailand see their peak season start from November and go on until February but there is not much of a difference in tariffs. Even if there is, the hotels are affordable still. In Goa, this is so different. For the price of one night at a five star hotel in Goa, one can spend three to four nights at an equally posh hotel in Krabi or Langkawi or even Colombo. Those places have even more to offer than Goa, so why is the industry encouraging such drastic pricing changes, especially when tourism as a whole is losing ground to other players in the country?
Sanjay Naik, Mapusa
