MARGAO: Macasana Panchayat that is part of the Cuncolim Assembly constituency, has seen three sarpanchas and a by-election as one elected member resigned after obtaining Portuguese nationality. This panchayat is truly quite backward as even the MGNREGA scheme has not been implemented since the Gram Rojgar Sahayak rarely visits the panchayat.
At the last panchayat elections held in 2012, the following seven members were elected to the panchayat: Cristina Vaz, Caetano Vaz, Joao Milagres D’Costa, Joaquim Costa, Salvador Alemao, Francisco D’Costa and Tereza Almeida.
Cristina Vaz was elected Sarpanch of the village but was toppled after a year because members felt that she was aligning too much with MLA Rajan Naik who belonged to the Bharatiya Janata Party that people from the village are not very comfortable with.
Tereza Almeida was then elected as the Sarpanch. However, after Joaquim D’Costa resigned as a panch and Patrocina Vaz was elected at the by-elections, Tereza was ousted as the sarpanch and Cristina was back in saddle on April 17, 2015.
“The financial position of the village panchayat is not good,” is the comment made by the Auditors in the Audit report of the panchayat for the year 2015-2016. The panchayat largely depends upon government grants to fund its activities.
The panchayat has leased out the ground floor of its building to the Syndicate Bank which is paying a monthly rent of Rs 4000. The panchayat is also found to be a tad lax in collection of taxes. As per the audit report, it is yet to collect Rs 2.58 lakh as house tax, Rs 31,890 as trade tax and Rs 6448 as cycle tax.
The panchayat regularly holds the four annual gram sabhas and the four special gram sabhas, however, the attendance is only around 50 to 60 and the quorum is never formed.
With regards to the Regional Plan, the panchayat called a surveyor to explain the map and the process to the people at a special gram sabha meeting and asked the people to write their suggestions to the Town & Country Planning Department. The panchayat, in a separate letter to the TCP, objected to 10 metres wide internal roads in the villages and also pointed out some settlement zone that was not marked.
It utilized the Zilla Panchayat member’s good offices to put pavers around the panchayat building to make it smooth and good looking.
Ironically, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has not taken off in the village as the Gram Rojgar Sahayak visits the panchayat on rare occasions and has not been seen for nearly year to such an extent that even her contact number was not available with anybody in the office.
According to Sarpanch Cristina, the village does not have any stray cattle problem and hence ruled out the need to set up a cattle pound. While earlier the panchayat used to collect garbage from each household every week, the same has since stopped because the government has not released the required funds for it.
Although there are quite a few migrants in the village, only three are registered with the panchayat but nobody is paying any fees to the panchayat for renting out their residential premises for such migrants. The panchayat has also not bothered to check how many stranger forms are filled up with the police station.
