AMIT POKRE & ALIYA ABREU
PANAJI
Even as the power centres, both at the State level and the Corporation of the City of Panaji, argue and debate over grandiose and yet-to-show result ‘Smart City’ ideas, there are chunks of the city’s geographic and demographic sections that have for decades been neglected and lived in almost sub-human civic conditions.
Be it the St Inez area next to Palacio de Goa, Boca de Vaca, Deulwada or the slope and foothill of Altinho at Mala-Fontainhas, locally known since the pre-Liberation era as Escadaria de Barbeiros, a basic facility like a bath-cum-toilet in the house is a luxury and has eluded these constituents for long.
But come elections or bypolls like this current one, residents of these areas who collectively add up to roughly a sizable quarter of Panaji’s 22,000-odd electorate are the most sought after by the contending politicians and their electioneering teams.
In the St Inez area near hotel Palacio de Goa, which journalists of The Goan visited, there are at least some 150 families living in small homes but who still have to rely on public toilets situated a distance away.
The area where mostly Muslim families live, none of their homes have toilets. In the middle of the cluster of homes there is an open space wherein lie two Sulabh International-run public toilets: one for men and the other for ladies.
A resident told us that all families use these toilets at a cost of Rs 50 per family per month. These are also open for the general public at Rs 5 per person.
Along the Deulwada and Boca de Vaca slopes of the Altinho hillock, the story is only a shade better. Here, only a handful of homes have graduated to possessing the luxury of their own toilets, thanks to a sewerage line laid in the area around the year 2000.
However, several families from Deulwada/Boca-de-Vaca have to rely on public toilets and many others who could afford it acquired apartments elsewhere and move there. They, meanwhile, have converted their houses into multiple, smaller rooms and are renting them out to people who relocate to the capital city for work but have no shelter.
Yet the sanitation facilities continue to be abysmal. There are two public toilets, one on the upper side of Mahalaxmi Temple and the other adjacent to the Sai Baba Temple near the spring. And, besides lack of toilets, those living here perennially face unhygienic surroundings, walkways and pathways strewn with garbage and poor illumination.
Several residents The Goan spoke to admit, albeit on an assurance they will be quoted anonymously, that most of the streetlights in their area are non-functional and drunkards often create a nuisance in the neighbourhood.
Another problem that is common to all the residents of the area is acute water shortage. Residents of the lower area said they are forced to store water as their taps run for only two hours daily from 6.30 to 8.30 in the morning.
Residents higher up along the Altinho hill slopes said they get water for three hours
in the morning and three hours in the evening.
Finally, all these areas face the problem of accessibility, especially the disabled, elderly and infirm, as their homes are accessible only by two flights of steps.
Even as contending candidates for the May 19 bypoll will promise to ameliorate the conditions in these parts of Panaji with dreams of a smart, clean and green city, those in the fray and those who won 15 elections since the first one in 1963 have performed with questionable success. Will the sixteenth be any different?
The result on May 23 and the balance term of this Goa legislative assembly can give us an answer.
