Team Herald
MARGAO: Setting up a community toilet near the market place in Chandor Cavorim village has taken an ugly turn with the demolition of the same by unknown persons. And the contractor has reportedly lodged a police complaint.
It may be recalled that the Chandor Cavorim panchayat was provided all five community toilets it had asked for and accordingly they were installed at various places with objections raised to installing it at the site proposed in the market.
As the toilet proposed in the market was at the entrance to one person’s house there was an objection. Significantly, some years ago when the market was reconstructed, there was strong objection to the sites selected for the toilet and accordingly a committee was constituted to study the matter.
The committee concluded that the toilets should not be erected at the entrance to anybody’s house and referring to modern practices recommended that the toilets be constructed across the road where the church has constructed toilets for the school students.
This recommendation was adopted at a subsequent gram sabha and the matter remained dead since then. However, now when the panchayat was given the toilets and they wanted to have them placed for the market users, they selected the same site that was objected to earlier.
Ignoring the objections raised to the site, the panchayat erected the toilet but the same was demolished that very night and panchayat Secretary Dinesh Gaonkar announced that the contractor has lodged a complaint against unknown persons for damaging the toilet.
Chandor Cavorim Sarpanch Edward D’Silva said they decided to install the toilet at that site as there was no objection to it in recent times and he thought the objection had since died down.
However, two people Lincoln Fernandes and Angela Miranda vide a letter dated September 5, 2019 asked for an extraordinary gram sabha to be convened to discuss this matter. It is pertinent to note that the Goa Panchayat Raj Act mandates that an extraordinary gram sabha can be asked for by one tenth of the members of the gram sabha.
