I am a Goan NRI based in UK, now retired. I travel to Goa every year and spend 3 months at a flat I bought in a resort in Calangute in 1997.
I went to the local Panchayat every year for 13 years and paid the House Tax and was always given a receipt in the name of the developer and never in my name. At the time I only had an Agreement of Sale. In 2011, I was finally given a Sale Deed.
Armed with the Deed, I went to the Panchayat to have the House Tax receipt issued in my name and that was when my problems with the Panchayat began. I had to gather numerous documents, some had to be notarised copies and presented to them. I was asked to go into the market and buy a file to pin up all the documents. I did that and submitted it. Nothing changed; the receipt was still issued in the name of the developer who by now had closed his company.
In 2014 I went to the office and the person responsible agreed to try and discover what had happened to the request to change the name. When I called back a few weeks later, he told me it at been approved at a meeting of the Panchayat held on December 15, 2012. However, the next time I went to pay the tax, they still would not issue a receipt in my name. “Go and see the guy in that back office” they said. There was no one in the back office.
I wrote several letters to the Director of Panchayats with no success. All the Director did was reply with a copy of the letter to the Block Development Officer asking him to investigate and report back. All the BDO did was to send me a letter enclosing a letter he sent to the Panchayat asking them to investigate and I heard nothing. After another complaint to the Director of Panchayats which got me nowhere, I wrote saying I would not pay any more house tax unless the receipt was given in my name as I was the owner paying it. Nothing happened and nobody seemed to care that the tax went uncollected.
In February 2018 I was advised to meet a local politician who apparently is the local strongman controlling the Panchayat. He told me to see another person in power who was either on leave, at a meeting, at lunch or somewhere else each time I went to meet her. It was time to go back to the UK.
When I came back to Goa on my winter sojourn in December 2018 a full six years after the change of name was approved, I went looking for Jennifer. Hurrah she was at her desk. She told me to see a person at the front desk, who sent me to see someone else who in turn asked me to see the Secretary. Then the Secretary told me I would have to start a new file again because this was a new Panchayat and the old people had all gone!
In any other country this is a job that would take minutes once proof of ownership like a Sale Deed had been provided. Like the Electricity Department these bodies are overstaffed, full of staff, who see their role as making life difficult for honest citizen and not as solving problems. I believe that if I had suggested a bribe (which I refuse to do) the job would have been promptly done and dusted.
As a socialist, I am not generally in favour of privatisation but the only practical way of getting rid of the deadwood and cure corruption is through privatisation. In the meantime, I have the house tax in the bank waiting for the Panchayat to say they would issue in the name of the person who is actually paying the tax.
