PANJIM: The Assistant Registrar of Cooperative Societies (ARCS) office, South Zone, is currently overloaded with work since it caters to over 1,300 housing, urban credit and 12 other types of societies.
The ARCS South zone has a humongous jurisdiction area comprising Mormugao and Salcete talukas, which makes it humanly impossible for the designated staff to cover the area within stipulated time.
The entire coastal villages of Benaulim, Varca, Colva and the town areas including suburban areas fall under this zonal office.
ARCS South Zone Rajesh Parwar endorsed the fact that his office has a huge jurisdiction to look after. “Indeed we have a big area under our office. However, we are managing the work by distributing the work equally among the designated officials,” he said.
ARCS South zone currently has 1,397 different co-operative societies under their jurisdiction. Out of these 1,397, housing societies alone make up for 1,264 societies. There are 21 urban credit societies while there are 37 salary earners and 16 consumer societies that fall under South Zone.
Some of the staff who are designated for inspections and field visits said that there have been instances where in more than 100 inspections are lined up, which need to be completed within a short period of time.
“Maximum staff who are sent for field inspections are women. There have been instances where women had to go to deserted offices at remote locations without public transport connectivity, and sometimes they have to visit residential flats which are highly unsafe,” said a female employee.
The staff in fact are forced to travel at their own cost as they are allowed to take the benefit of Travel Allowance (TA) only if they use public transport.
Mormugao Taluka has more than 357 registered housing co-operative societies in addition to several urban credit societies to cater to. The recent changes in the duties of the staff of the co-operative societies have come as a sigh of relief. However the problems seem to be unending as the staff is now busy in completing the backlog of work due to absence of internet services for last two months after shifting the office to new, but cramped premises.
