MARGAO: Come December 4 and a 20-member delegation of South Goa Zilla Panchayat will fly from Dabolim on a seven-day tour of North India.
The tour will cost the state exchequer a whopping Rs 12 lakh to cover the expenses of the Zilla members representing South Goa.
Ask South Goa Zilla Chairperson, Nelly Rodrigues about the tour and she is quick to point out that the ZP members are going on a study tour and not on a pleasure jaunt at government cost.
But the selection of states and cities to study the Zilla Panchayat pattern does not inspire much confidence. The ZP members will be visiting the temple towns of Ayodhya, Varanasi, Hardwar in Uttar Pradesh, besides Dehra Dun and Mussorie.
Sources in the South Goa Zilla Panchayat office informed that the team is also likely to visit picturesque Himachal Pradesh and would make a day-long halt in Delhi, before flying back home.
This is the not the first time that a South Goa Zilla Panchayat team is heading for a “study” tour at government’s cost. In fact, if sources are to be believed, the zilla members have been going on study tours every year, since the creating of the district panchayat bodies around 13 years ago.
The reasons behind the study tours are simple: The tours help the ZP members understand ZP patterns in other states so that the same is implemented in Goa as well. Sadly, a host of reports compiled by the ZP teams on the pattern of ZPs in other states is gathering dust in government record books. And the study tour continues with government funding, despite government’s indifference and callousness in devolving powers and functions to the district panchayat bodies.
