KARSTEN MIRANDA
MARGAO: When the South Goa District Library in Navelim was opened 12 years ago, it was considered to have state-of-the-art infrastructure.
However, today the same infrastructure has deteriorated and the people visiting the library often complain about the problems they face here.
A staff speaking on condition of anonymity stated that major problems have been caused as maintenance has been neglected for the last decade.
The entrance of the building — the first floor, is in darkness as most of the fans and lights are non-functional. The floor, which houses magazine and periodical section, also has a self-study area but this place plunges into darkness in the evenings or on days when it is raining heavily.
The fans and lights are not working properly on the second floor too. There is some relief for visitors though as the fans and lights are working on the third floor, which has the children’s and binding section as well as on the fourth floor — the Goa section.
Major repair work of the building dome is underway on the fifth floor. The dome has been leaking for years and buckets have been placed to collect the rain water.
While sheets have been placed to prevent any more seepage into the building, there are other areas in the building that need major electrical repairs such as the elevators that have not been functioning properly for nearly 12 years.
Speaking to Herald, Raksha Khobrekar, librarian-in-charge said that she had taken over the charge six months ago and that a plan has been put in place to streamline all the maintenance work.
“We have identified all the requirements and are presently working on one issue at a time. We have also taken up some new initiatives. There was no canteen earlier, which we recently started and we also created a new self-study room on the ground floor,” Khobrekar said.
On the ground floor is also an office where visitors can get their photocopying and other service requirements done. This same large office, however, has many computers which have been discarded by the IT Department. Furthermore, in this entire building, there is just one computer in a working condition and this one too has some technical problems.
“We have already moved the file to get 40 computers and are following up on the matter. We have also moved the files for getting to replace 25 faulty MCBs to fix the fans and lights on the floors where it is non-functional,” Khobrekar added.
A few months ago, a senior citizen was stranded in an elevator and freed after a long time.
Khobrekar stated that the elevator’s UPS are not working but this is also something they are trying to resolve.
She added that they have placed an alarm on the elevators in case of any emergency. Presently, there is a signboard in front of the elevator informing the public, it is out of order.
Speaking of power backup, the biggest issue the library faced recently was when there was a short circuit at the building’s generator, which added to the chaos.
“We have sent the file to the State Central library. We got the electricians from the Ravindra Bhavan to inspect the generator which will now be repaired,” she added.
The generator outage affected various services such as the internet connectivity and Khobrekar pointed out that they had recently ensured that the server room was continuously cooled by air conditioning.
Without the power backup, the multi-purpose room on the first floor is also out of use and a government programme that was scheduled to be held there had to be cancelled.
While the staff said once all these issues are rectified, the situation will improve soon, visitors to the library questioned why this library had been neglected for all these years.
