TEAM HERALD
MARGAO: As many as five MLAs attended the District Planning Committee (DPC), South on Thursday, promising to revive the defunct district planning panel, which has till date not consolidated a single plan since its constitution nearly a decade-and-a-half ago.
However, no consolidated plan from South Goa district will go to the government this year either, as the deadline to complete the exercise of receiving plans from the panchayats and municipal bodies and consolidate them into a district plan expires in November.
MLAs of Benaulim Caitu Silva, Sanguem Subhash Faldesai, Velim Benjamin Silva, Cuncolim Rajan Naik and Vasco Carlos Almeida made their presence felt at the DPC meet chaired by Nelly Rodrigues and agreed to follow up the problems of staff and funds with the Panchayat Minister, Laxmikant Parsekar.
The MLAs, however, were in no mood to accept the blame that the DPC could not meet for want of quorum owing to the absence of the legislators.
Chairperson Nelly told the MLAs the meeting called in September 2013 had to be adjourned for lack of quorum. “Not a single MLA turned up for the meeting. We lost our hopes. In fact, we were all demoralised that no MLA was attending the meeting. We went on a back foot in putting the DPC panel in place for want of support from the government and MLAs,” Nelly told the MLAs.
The MLAs questioned Nelly whether the DPC had moved the file to the government for staff recruitment. CEO Krishna Signapurkar placed before the meeting the correspondence made by the DPC and the several reminders to the panchayat Director to depute the staff.
