What is your councillor’s role in a municipality?

MARGAO: Just a week from the municipal council elections and the campaigning has begun to get hectic. MLAs return home post 9 pm having visited homes back-to-back trying to get their candidates elected and trying to wrest control on their town.

Councillors have got their pamphlets and paraphernalia ready as they give out EPIC card details, voting booth details and flyers promising the stars. And the people complain that five years back the candidate made the same promises but never turned up after that. Herald decided to bring you what is a councillor’s role and hence this interaction.

Jose Philip D’Souza, twice councillor turned twice MLA of Vasco points out that a councillor should first keep away from State-level politics and should not clash with the MLA for vested interests but should only go to the MLA for assistance and funding.

“Sanitation of his or her own ward and the focus of keeping the surroundings clean while going to the MLA only for applying for JNNURM and other schemes and not for political reasons should be the focus of the councillor,” explains D’Souza who asserts that he steered clear from politics and that was his success as a councillor way back then in the 1990s.

Similarly, Mormugao Municipal Council chairperson turned Vasco MLA in 2012, Carlos Almeida, explains that the councillor needs to focus on internal roads, storm water drains and garbage clearance since the first inconvenience a citizen faces is that of garbage menace and the stray dog menace that comes with garbage.

Asserts Digambar Kamat, the 1984 councillor who went on to become four-time MLA and Chief Minister of Goa, that the councillor needs to get involved with the citizens, be a part of activities in the ward and the city and then identify the issues of a town and raise those at council meetings and work towards solving them with the Chairperson and the Chief Officer.

While former chairperson of Cuncolim Municipal Council and sitting MLA Rajan Naik points out that his tenure as a councillor was a difficult one especially it being a council carved out of a previous panchayat area.

“Forget storm water drains, Cuncolim had areas where the sewage flowed onto the main roads and we had to build septic tanks for homes. Also we created a mechanism wherein the councillor and the council would keep the electricity department informed of the electricity problems and simultaneously ensured that all streets in Cuncolim town were lit up,” explains Naik.

Naik says that he worked with Arecio and then Joaquim Alemao and finally beat Alemao in an election, but during his tenure as a councillor, he would never have political arguments with the previous MLAs because the councillor’s job is to implement works on a quick need basis and there is no room for politics.