A visit to the Civil-Cum-Sub Registrar’s office at Matanhy de Saldanha Complex is a sight of chaos and disorder with unruly behaviour of the public and nonchalant attitude of the staff.
I wish to narrate a harrowing experience I encountered at the South Goa Collector’s office for work related to a sale deed with an appointed time of 10 am on July 10 but had to wait for an agonising three hours and the reason attributed for the delay was that their computer system was down due to non-availability of power supply.
Needless to mention, the Sub Registrar’s office receives a large number of footfalls from in and around Margao town and remote villages of South Goa. With a massive workload to cope with on a day to day basis, the Collector’s office should be well equipped with a back-up system in place and its own generator given the erratic power supply position prevailing in the State.
The auxiliary supply at the complex only caters to fans and lights inside the officers cabins. To add insult to injury even the elevators remain non-functional, which make it extremely difficult for physically challenged persons, senior citizens and heart patients to climb the steep stairs to the second floor.
It may be of interest to know that to facilitate ease of doing business at the Sub Registrar’s office, all documentation is prepared on-line by the buyer/ seller and then uploaded on their website, based on which a time slot is allotted for completion of bio-metrics which only includes uploading photos and thumb impression and this exercise does not take no more than 10 minutes.
In a reversal of sorts, in Maharashtra, e-registration of property documents is outsourced to authorised private agencies by the Government who visits the residence of buyers/sellers with bio-metric equipment and uploads the same on the Sub-Registrar’s website.
If a similar arrangement can be replicated in Goa, it will avoid the hassle and ordeal of visiting the Sub-Registrar’s office for a piece-meal work. One hopes that the MLA of Fatorda in coordination with the Minister in-charge look into this vexed issue and arrives at a tangible solution.
