MARGAO
Will the Margao Municipal Council and the Traffic Police explain the status of the drive against vehicles abandoned along roadsides across the commercial capital?
For an answer, consider this. A corroded vehicle has been lying along the Margao ring road for the last several months before the municipality issued a public notice, cautioning owners to tow away their vehicles from public spaces or face action.
Leave alone towing of the corroded vehicle, its remains have now become a waste dumping ground, only indicating the failure of the civic and police authorities in addressing the issue of abandoned vehicles.
Pedestrians taking a regular walk on the ring road have pointed out that the mangled vehicle is fast becoming a dumping place. If unattended, it is feared that waste may regularly find its way to the vehicle in the future.
This may throw up a question or two for the civic authorities, whether the 15-day public notice issued by the civic body to the owners of abandoned vehicles to remove the unused vehicles from the footpaths and roadsides two years ago had brought about a change in the ground reality.
The Margao Municipal Council had invoked Section 122 of the Motor Vehicle Act, 1988, mandating all vehicles found hampering pedestrian movement due to unclaimed, damaged and parked haphazardly by the roadside and obstructing the pedestrian move have to be removed.
The civic body had further reminded citizens that Sections 127 and 201 of the Motor Vehicle Act, 1988, empower the authorities to tow away vehicles abandoned or unattended for 10 hours or more in a public place, causing impediment or being a barrier to the free flow of traffic.
The Margao Traffic Cell seemed to have resigned to its fate, citing the absence of dedicated space to park the abandoned vehicles, if towed. Traffic officials have shifted the onus of providing dedicated space to park the towed vehicles on the civic body.
On the other hand, Margao civic officials seemed to have run out of ideas on how to go about addressing the issues of abandoned and accident vehicles on the roadsides.
Leave alone the vehicles, the Margao municipal city fathers and babus seemed to have turned a blind eye to the parking of rent-a-cars and rent-a-bikes along the ring roads and parking spaces, denying parking amenities to the citizens.
Sources told The Goan that the South Goa Magistrate Jyoti Kumar has taken cognisance of the menace of abandoned vehicles. Given that the traffic police and the Margao municipality have miserably failed in addressing the issue, sources said the Magistrate is expected to order a fresh initiative by government agencies to address the problem.
