FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2024
Empowering people is good governance
The Vice-President of India Venkaiah Naidu on his visit to Goa has rightly highlighted the need to address the trust deficit in public perception about legislators. The trust deficit between people and Government is at an all time high. It is imperative that the legislators stay connected with the people and that there is always an ongoing discourse to meet the needs and aspirations of the public. As Venkaiah Naidu has pointed out, the legislators must empower the people and not themselves.
Good Governance is all about heeding to the voice of the people and not crushing the people’s right to oppose projects that are against the interests of Goa and its already fragile environment. Good Governance is about empowering people with honest information and facts, to enable them to work with Government to achieve solutions to issues that are of paramount importance to the people and the common good not vanity projects or cheap gesture politics for photoshoots.
While we claim to be the world’s largest democracy, we are sadly enveloped in a dictatorial regime that does not care to heed to the people’s voice.
For the proper administration of the State, the bureaucracy including the police force has to act independently and judiciously free from any political interference or manipulation. Sadly, in Goa the ground and factual reality is not so while the administration has meekly surrendered as political slaves of those in power.
We elect legislators not for cutting ribbons and breaking coconuts at hot-mixing of roads but to be excellent outstanding law makers and to enact good laws while extensively debating issues concerning the betterment besides the welfare of the people and State.
Good Governance never depends upon laws only, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern.
Aires Rodrigues, Ribandar
Is Goa taken for a ride?
Hundreds of policemen in the time of pandemic were asked to stay on duty throughout the VVIP journey/route for so long hours standing without even getting drinking water. Their siblings at home are suffering for essential commodities and few of them sick as they don't get any support from their friends and relatives because nowadays people are scared of visiting each other.
These VVIPs must understand as we have been asked to stay safe home they too should not travel.
This is not the time to inspect, inaugurate or go for site seeing, specially when this State is not having proper roads which are in dilapidated conditions. That too when there is no man power to run the government department (PWD, CCP, RTO, Panchayat and police).
We have been seeing traffic lights installed long ago and not yet commissioned. Our CM instead of pressuring the contractor to speed up the work he is busy inviting more dignitaries and thus putting citizens in hardship when we have to buy essentials like vegetables, meat, etc, in the market.
Police stop us for parking our vehicles on roads where these VVIPs prefer to visit. Our vehicles are being lifted on their route.
Everytime these VVIPs come their number of sign boards along their main route with our CM sign board is projected or inserted.
All the Heads of department like Collector, Mamlatdar, Police, CCP, Panchayat and other officials are being put out of gear.
Stephen Dias, Dona Paula
China should own Covid responsibility
The Covid-19 pandemic has now claimed a toll of just over 1.9 million lives worldwide, which is comparable to the entire floating population of Goa, having succumbed to the deadly corona virus. America (3.74 lakh deaths), Brazil (2.03 lakh deaths) India (1.51 lakh) Mexico (1.33 lakh) and UK (81,000) are amongst the worst affected according to Johns Hopkins University figures.
Over a year has passed since the outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan, but although vaccines have been deployed in America, Britain and a few other countries, still at this point in time, the infected number has reached the 90.2 million mark worldwide and the death toll especially in America and Britain continue to hit new peaks. The new variant of the corona virus in Britain has led to about 80,000 new cases being reported infected on 10/01/2021, thus overwhelming hospitals and stretching the National Health Services which has almost reached an emergency situation. Who is responsible for unleashing this diabolical virus and what is the degree of accountability that has to be apportioned?
It is known that the origin of the virus was in Wuhan in China during the fourth week of December, 2019 in the wet markets through the bats, snakes and pangolins or due to an experiment in the virology institute of Wuhan which went wrong.
Even the World Health Organisation team on fact finding mission has not been allowed to visit China to investigate the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. What is the degree of blame that has to be apportioned on China, which is not cooperating in a just and equitable investigation into the origin issue, which has caused untold economic hardships and also such a heavy death toll worldwide? Can the world only stand as a mute spectator to this deadly trail of death?
Elvidio Miranda, Panjim
'Goa Online' is mostly Goa offline
The State government's solo window e-governance platform 'Goa Online' is prone to frequent crashes and unusually high instances of downtime, causing a lot of frustration to users and financial losses to industrial entities. Major businesses, ordinary citizens and the government itself are heavy users of the platform and most online transactions and applications are dropped midway due to server outages.
Input credit entries, contract bidding, tax filing, admission applications, RTI queries/redressal, real time information dissemination, data coding and other time bound/barred activities are laid waste due to weak IT infrastructure which majorly runs on legacy systems, data dump servers with high latency/low redundancy even on minimal load.
The government has issued directives to the IT department to rectify matters especially so that the State can improve its score on the 'ease of doing business' parameters.
The entire IT system needs to be shifted to a fibre optic backbone incorporating scalable, high density, cloud enabled POWER 9 servers with super low latency circuits to enable seamless user experience and more efficient single window clearance.
Vinay Dwivedi, Benaulim
Social distancing forgotten in Goa?
With reference to SOPs and social distancing, the way things are going on in Goa and elsewhere looks as if the pandemic is over. Football matches, cricket matches, rallies, campaigning is all conducted with people crowding around with no masks. Police also are seen patrolling but no one is questioning about wearing of masks.
I would like to ask why are MLAs and other prominent persons going to inaugurate such events. So many deaths have occurred; even in Goa so many cases and now the new strains. The medical fraternity is burdened under immense pressure. There should be accountability of those in charge. We are not ignorant that we don't know things. For months together the stadium in Fatorda had shut its gates to public but now there are crowds there. I hope the authorities take immediate corrective action for everyone's safety.
Francisca Mesquita, Fatorda
