Slowly and gradually the anger among the villagers from Quelossim against the state administration has been growing. All because there is undue delay in shifting of newly formed Quelossim Panchayat to its new premises due to which the villagers are forced to walk long distance to get their work done.
Though the villagers thought that after getting a separate panchayat they would get a new panchayat office close to their residence and they would do their panchayat works quickly. However, they were wrong as even after two months their new Panchayat still operates from Cortalim VP office and their Sarpanch Maria Souza still attends them in public area, which according to the villagers is embarrassing for them as for the Sarpanch.
It’s now over two months since the time Maria Souza got elected as Sarpanch, but operates like any ordinary staff as she has no office to sit and is now tired to talk about the kind of hardships faced by her while operating in such manner.
“I am now tired of asking for shifting us to the new office premises and fed up of hearing assurances. This issue was highlighted in papers and on media but nothing happened. Now I don’t have words to explain to the villagers as to why things are getting delayed. I feel the BDO and others should explain about the whole delay to the Quelossim villagers,” Sarpanch Maria Souza said.
A Quelossim villager said that “Recently it was Herald that had highlighted the issue about the whole delay in shifting Quelossim VP office to Quelossim Church property, as identified as approved by the State administration. Now it’s over two months, still we have to travel same distance like in past and we still don’t know how many more months the concerned officials will take to resolve our issues. Also we don’t like to see our sarpanch sitting outside in public area and just opposite to the office of Cortalim Sarpanch. This according to us is injustice to elected body that operates without any proper office,” he said.
It’s not that the only Quelossim Villagers are upset as people from Cortalim Village too are upset with the whole delay in shifting Quelossim VP office to the new premises. While supporting the Quelossim Villagers and its elected body in their demand on shifting its VP office on priority, Cortalim Sarpanch Senia Pereira also complaints that due to operations of two Panchayat under one roof, works of both the Panchayat gets hampered.
“Firstly I feel pity on the people as they have to travel all the way from Quelossim to Cortalim VP office. Similarly we have common staff – a secretary for both Cortalim and Quelossim VP and our work gets thus gets pressurized with the work overload because they have to handle both the works separately but under one roof. This in turns hampers operations of both the panchayats. Also it feels embarrassing even for us to see that a Sarpanch who is elected member is sitting outside my own office,” said Pereira.
