WEDNESDAY, MAY 08, 2024
Team Herald
SANGUEM: The desperate pleas of a widow Sudha Gaonkar who lives in a pitiable condition with her daughter at Patem, Netravali has finally been heard and she has been assured a proper dwelling house before the onset of monsoons.
O Heraldo in its edition dated December 12, 2023 highlighted her plight wherein not only did she have a proper dwelling house, but was also denied the much required ration card, caste certificate due to which she was also not getting the widow pension benefits.
As her plight was being spoken about, Goa Assembly Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar along with local MLA Subhash Phaldessai visited her on April 17 and promised her a proper dwelling house before the onset of monsoons under the “Shramdham Scheme”.
Tawadkar disclosed that the construction will be done by a team of volunteers as done in his Canacona constituency.
Meanwhile, minister Subhash Phaldessai promised to pitch in 25 per cent of the cost of constructing the house.
Sudha has been living in the mud house with her daughter since the death of her husband for over a decade. Over the years, the overall condition of the house had deteriorated
and was on the verge of collapse. In fact the mother-daughter live in a house that has no roof and depend on a tarpaulin to protect them from the rains.
Every day is a living hell for her as despite being a TB patient, she has to cook using firewood where she needs to blow on the fire and very often chokes and turns breathlessness in the bargain.
Sudha has other problems too which she bears due to her illiteracy. She does not possess a ration card due to which she does not get the grains provided to people below poverty line and Tawadkar promised to resolve this problem shortly.
Being illiterate, she does not have her marriage certificate due to which she cannot establish that she is a widow to avail of the schemes provided to them.
Hailing from Canacona, her name was registered in the ration card there. Unfortunately, as she misplaced the Name Deletion Certificate from Canacona, her name could not be added to the ration card in Sanguem.
They are unable to get any benefits provided to the Scheduled Tribe community despite belonging to it only because she does neither has a caste certificate nor the documents required to obtain it.
Local panchayat member Rakhi Naik has been consistently following up Sudha’s case for the last many years trying to get her some benefit.
