Finally, the silence has been broken on the spurt of accidents in Goa. Authorities have begun finding ways to control the situation; to top it all, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has ordered a crackdown on drunken driving. The irony is that the State is woefully short on alcometers, with more than half of the machines non-functional. That's not all. The State government had rejected a proposal to source alcometers at the fag end of 2022. And the current plan of the Transport department to purchase three interceptor vehicles, eight speed-radar guns, 50 alcometers and another 20 alcometers for the KTCL is yet to get a seal of approval.
The question is, if there is absolute clarity that reckless and drunken are major factors causing deaths on the roads, why the hesitancy to equip the department? And what is the Transport Department doing with equipment that is out of order? The police, under the current situation, are unable to crack down on offences because they don't have the wherewithal and the gear.
So, the only option is to manage with whatever resources are available. In Mapusa, police have devised a novel way to track traffic offenders. Plain-clothed policemen are moving with their cellphone cameras and clicking photos of road offenders. A challan is then posted to the residential address. This appears to be an innovative idea but fails against the objective of acting as a deterrent for rash and negligent driving because there is no spontaneous action. The only takeaway is that it will add to the department coffers.
Another interesting development is the chief minister's decision to revisit the Traffic Sentinel Scheme, where citizens reporting traffic offences via videos and photos uploaded to the system are given financial rewards. Introduced during the Manohar Parrikar regime, the scheme ran into rough weather after citizens recording visuals faced the wrath of offenders and, on some occasions, were even assaulted.
That the enforcement is failing short is evident from the fact that the CM is now falling back on the 'controversial' sentinel scheme. The question is whether community policing can work in Goa. It may be recalled the scheme was stopped because it sparked off a law and order situation. Between 2018-2019 there were at least five cases where sentinels were attacked. In January 2019, a mob damaged the car of a person after he was spotted clicking photographs. Earlier, a person was assaulted on the mere suspicion of recording violations through a CCTV camera at Shiroda. The sporadic attacks on community policing exposed the lack of security for those engaged in tracking violations. An indisciplined motorist cannot be expected to exercise restraint, especially when he knows the consequences. While the sentinel scheme will cover the shortcomings of manpower in enforcement, it cannot be a full-proof system to remedy the accident scenario.
Sawant has spoken about the indiscipline of motorists and drunken driving being the primary causes of accidents in the State but has consciously steered away from poor road conditions and faulty engineering. Traffic management needs a holistic approach instead of piecemeal solutions. While road maintenance is necessary, enforcement will have to shoulder the responsibility of ensuring safety, and this is where there has to be a paradigm shift.
