Team herald
MARGAO: The Tribal Welfare Department and Scheduled Tribes Commission on Monday organized ‘Sankalp Din’ in honour of the martyrs of the Balli riot Dilip Velip and Manguesh Gaonkar.
Addressing the gathering, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar rued how Goa’s tribals were excluded from education, development and other essentials. He said, “The State government is positive about the development of STs. The backlog of jobs will be filled soon, and I assure that the community won’t need to have an uprising ever again.”
Tribal Welfare Minister Ramesh Tawadkar assured that his ministry, with the help of various agencies, would ensure that the entire ST community would benefit from the schemes.
“The hectic exercise of amendments, changes, and tune-ups to the Forest Act is on. To speed up the process, I discussed with the CM, who is also the finance minister, a Rs 8 crore fund to have an independent agency for the survey. In fact, the money has already been passed,” said Tawadkar. He also informed that the Tribal Department had around 10 schemes of education development for the ST community, which had helped almost 18,000 students.
Winner of the Adivasi Pradnyawant Puraskar, Prakash Shankar Velip, and Sneha Gaonkar were later felicitated for their contribution to the field of education. Velip donated his cash award towards the construction of a memorial for the Balli martyrs.
