MARGAO, GOA — Former Goa Tourism Minister and veteran legislator representing Benaulim and Nuvem, Francisco Xavier Mickky Pacheco, has launched a blistering attack against the Goa Transport Department over the arbitrary installation of automated traffic signals and artificial intelligence (AI) surveillance cameras across rural pockets of the state. Leveling serious allegations of institutional exploitation, the former MLA condemned the implementation at the Betalbatim junction along the Major District Road (MDR) as a masterclass in bureaucratic absurdity designed solely to generate revenue by penalizing local villagers navigating their daily lives. Pacheco has formally issued a definitive ultimatum to the state administration, demanding the complete dismantling and removal of these systems by June 30, 2026, warning of widespread public unrest and direct community action if the deadline is ignored.
The senior leader lambasted the complete absence of scientific road mapping and structural logic behind placing a rigid, automated traffic signal at the core of the Betalbatim junction. Highlighting the ground reality, Pacheco noted that the junction sits within an immediate, tight radius of critical community institutions, located a mere ten meters from a government primary school, twenty meters from the local Panchayat Ghar, twenty-five meters from the Betalbatim Church, and directly adjacent to local dining establishments. The natural concentration of these institutions inherently slows down and regulates the flow of traffic to a perfectly safe and normal pace, making an artificial electronic signal entirely redundant and counterproductive. Pacheco argued that if the Transport Department possessed genuine engineering vision, it would opt for a streamlined roundabout to manage the junction. He further extended an open challenge to the state, declaring that if the government lacks the initiative or funds to construct a basic roundabout, he is fully prepared to personally finance and construct a modern, aesthetically pleasing roundabout in the honored memory of his late father, Joao Francis Pacheco, provided the administration grants the necessary legal permissions.
In a scathing condemnation of the state's leadership, Pacheco highlighted how the Transport Minister has bypasses all standard governance protocols by handing over the state's transport ecosystem to an outsourced private player without conducting any legitimate feasibility surveys, engineering studies, or road mapping assessments. By granting this private operator a completely free hand to recklessly erect traffic signals and AI surveillance infrastructure anywhere they please, the current administration has fundamentally abdicated its responsibility to the public. This unchecked, outsourced arrangement is nothing short of a calculated financial assault authorized by the Transport Minister, effectively cutting the throats of ordinary Goans at large and aggressively encroaching upon their basic, everyday living conditions just to maximize private profit margins.
Exposing what he termed a scandalous and predatory revenue-sharing mechanism, Pacheco accused the Transport Department of actively selling out the peace and liberties of ordinary Goan citizens to corporate profiteers under a public-private partnership model. Highly placed sources indicate that the department has outsourced traffic enforcement and camera operations to a private entity under a highly suspect arrangement where an astronomical seventy-five percent of all fine collection spoils are pocketed by the private firm, leaving a meager twenty-five percent for the state exchequer. The former minister expressed deep shock that the automated AI cameras are being weaponized to extract fines from rural residents moving within a micro-radius of their homes. He stated it is a total travesty of governance that local villagers traveling barely one hundred meters to drop their children at the primary school, or elders riding down the lane to attend holy mass at the village church, are forced to idle at unnecessary red lights only to be served extortionate, automated challans at their doorsteps for minor infractions like missing a helmet on a village backroad.
Pacheco asserted that the patience of the Goan people has reached an absolute breaking point, and they will no longer tolerate being treated as automated cash cows for an outsourced corporate syndicate while the state's actual road infrastructure remains poorly mapped, structurally broken, and completely neglected. This statement serves as a final, non-negotiable warning to the Transport Department through the public eye of the print and digital media. The department is given a hard deadline until June 30, 2026, to remove the unnecessary signal system and predatory AI cameras from the Betalbatim junction and surrounding rural sectors. Should the government fail to rectify this administrative blunder and continue to trample upon the simple lifestyle of local communities by the specified date, the state administration will be held solely responsible for the inevitable public fallout, as aggrieved villagers will take matters into their own hands, manually dismantle the signals, and throw the surveillance cameras out of their villages.
Office of Francisco Xavier Mickky Pacheco, Former Minister for Tourism, Government of Goa
Former MLA, Benaulim & Nuvem Constituencies.
