Team Herald

MARGAO: The Margao Town Country Planning Department and South Goa Planning and Development Authority is yet to learn lessons from the fire that broke out in the Transport Department office in Panjim KTC terminus building where hundreds of records were lost in the fire.

Even though these two departments are the record keepers of an industry valued in hundreds of crores of rupees and destruction of records would virtually legalise every illegal structure in the State, yet there are neither fire extinguishers in their record rooms nor anywhere else in the office.

The record room of the TCP departments stores thousands of files related to technical clearances granted for structures in Salcete. Considering, there are many cases of illegal extension, modification and construction throughout the taluka, one would assume that the department would be extremely cautious in protecting their records. However, this is not the case.

There has been no official record keeper in the TCP office for last many years. The job of record keeping is done by peons. The documents in these files are rarely paginated therefore there is always a risk of someone adding or removing documents in the file. But the greater risk is of fire due to a short circuit in the electrical wiring that is rarely inspected and maintained.

Interestingly, the SGPDA department has no CCTV cameras for the office. Even though officers of the SGPDA in the passage were locked inside their office by supporters of the present TCP Minister, the SGPDA has not installed any CCTV cameras inside the office. 

The Senior Town Planner SM Byakod informed Herald that the Fire department has to tell them where the fire extinguishers have to be placed. In other words, he tried to push the buck on the fire department.