After a wait of 40 years, Gopiki Ustekar, a widow, has finally got electricity connection in her house. She has been fighting for the last four decades groping in darkness and burning kerosene lamps so that she and her two daughters could find their way around her house. During this period, elected panch members had given her only promises on getting her electricity connection, but no one had fullfilled their promise.
In 1976 rural villages of Sattari were given electricity connections but it was only darkness for Gopiki for the past 40 years.
Every house in the village was lit up but Gopiki was the only one who could not obtain a connection. Her fellow villagers also didn’t help her with the application.
Gopiki, a widow from Uste village, lives with her two daughters. The only source of Gopiki’s income for her family is on her cashew plantation.
Surprisingly Uste is the first village in Goa where the Government had started the first Kadamba Bus service in 1980. This village is one of the backward villages in Valpoi constituency and falls in Ward No.2 of Nagargao Panchayat. Uste is located on a hill slope and the village road comprises many dangerous turns. Around 200 villagers are residing the village which has a total of 40 houses.
“For past 40 years, I was given only promises by politicians and elected panch members, that they would give power connection free of cost. They promised they would get everything done by getting the necessary things, but after the elections everyone forgot about us and also their promises,” said Gopiki.
Every Panchayat election, candidates from our ward had promised us power connection, but after election they never visited our home again,” Gopiki’s daughter said.
“Our present panch Ramu Kharwat has himself done all the paper work and completed the formality of getting us electricity connection and brought brightness into my house. Now I am feeling that I am finally living in liberated Goa,” says the poor widow.
“Gopiki Ustekar is a poor and illiterate woman; even her daughters are not educated. For the past many decades she was demanding electricity connection to her house. As an elected panch it is my duty to provide electricity for her, which I have fulfilled,” says Ward No.2 panch Ramu Kharwat.
Ninety per cent of the elected panch members from Sattari Taluka, don’t know what their duties are towards their people, who have elected them. They are not doing any public service and no development works in their elected wards. So the Government has to guide them and remind them of their duties towards the society, said a source from the village.
