MARGAO: The Margao Municipal library will be completing 108 years on December 4. The library has a treasure trove of old books such as Portuguese encyclopaedia, 15 volumes of Nehru’s selected works and Gazettes from 1962 onwards. However, after the centenary celebration back in 2014, the library has fallen into obscurity.
“The present Assistant Librarian is very good and she does all the work,” says Shriram Raiturkar who lives next to the municipal library.
“The last person to hold the post of Librarian Cipriano Andrade retired in 2015. Since then the post of the Librarian has remained vacant,” he said.
Sources in the municipality informed that the Assistant librarian has recently been given the additional charge of the post of librarian. She now does the job of both, the Librarian and Assistant Librarian. But this is just the beginning of the staff woes in the library.
Who are the people working in the Library? Sources informed that anyone who cannot work in the Municipality is transferred to the Library; eight staff working in the Library, including the Assistant Librarian. Only two of them have passed their SSC.
Currently, there are two peons working in the library, one of whom is on leave because of an operation while the other is physically challenged. A sweeper is doing the job of issuing books. She, however, doesn’t know to use the computer so she is manually updating the records of the books taken and received.
Another staff named Raju, against whom the municipality had received several complaints from the public, was shifted to the library. Although he is a UDC, sources say that he is not ready to do anything let alone use the computer. Another sweeper from the technical section has been shifted to the library but she being illiterate is of no use in the library.
Shockingly, the children’s section does not have any staff. The reading room, also known as the newspaper section, has a staff who does his work diligently from 8 am to 5 pm. The other staff in the reading section is illiterate and is on sick leave since last one month.
Sources say every year the Library is allocated around Rs 5 lakh in the municipality budget. Three lakh is used to pay the salaries of the staff. The Municipality buys books worth around 2 lakh annually. However, Herald couldn’t confirm this claim since almost all the books on the shelves looked old and worn out.
Savio Coutinho, the former chairperson of MMC, informed that the bar-coding system which was the part of the e-library project was started in 2008. The project was funded through MPLAD funds. However, the books in the library haven’t been tagged because none of the staff knows how to use the barcode machine which has been installed in the library.
The Library does not have a copier machine if someone wants to copy any document. “They don’t keep newspapers for more than 3 years. A library must bind and keep all the newspapers like how it’s done in the Central Library. If students want to reference books on animals or any other science, they cannot at all relevant subject books in the library are outdated,” says Raiturkar.
Raiturkar said that people want the library open during holidays and that the staff can be paid overtime for it.
Many blame mobile phones for the fall in readership in public libraries. However, while other libraries, including the Central Library in Panjim and the District library in Navelim, provide services like e-library, self-check-in /check-outs etc, the Margao Municipal Library has been neglected. “I wonder how many councillors read books. Till we have educated councillors who know the worth of books, only then the Library might get the attention it deserves,” Raiturkar said.
