the goan I network
MARGAO
This may seem strange, but true. Any visitor to the South Goa District Collectorate would confirm how the security personnel and housekeeping staff go about sanitizing visitors and screening them with thermal guns right at the entrance gate.
In fact, no visitor is allowed entry inside the Collectorate complex before their hands are sanitized and undergo thermal screening. The imposing building, housing revenue offices and other departments, was sanitized before officials, staff and visitors started trickling into the complex.
Welcome to the Old South Goa Collectorate building, which plays host to over half-a-dozen government departments.
Unlike the new collectorate building, rechristened as the Matanhy Saldanha Administrative Complex, one cannot find any security personnel or housekeeping staff sanitizing visitors to the Old Collectorate building.
The lone entry and exit gate is not manned by any security guard and neither are the visitors sanitized nor subjected to thermal screening. In fact, if sources are to be believed, the Old Collectorate building has not been sanitized before officials and visitors started
visiting the building post-April 20.
When The Goan team visited the Old Collectorate building on Thursday, it found that visitors were cooly walking inside without anyone sanitizing their hands and there was no thermal screening.
The Goan understands that the South Goa ZP had dashed off a letter to the authorities, including the MMC, to sanitize the office, but in vain. Left with no option, South Goa ZP CEO Agnelo Fernandes, got the ZP office sanitized with disinfectants, but who will sanitize the entire building remains unanswered.
Departments such as Agriculture, South Goa Administrator of Comunidades, Tribal Welfare, Women and Child Development, Zilla Panchayat are presently housed in the Old Collectorate building for the moment.
An official maintained that the government should immediately take up the work of sanitizing the Old Collectorate building on top most priority.
“Since the building still comes under the District Collectorate, the district authorities should immediately depute housekeeping staff or security personnel at the gate to sanitize the visitors,” an official said, adding that the government depute any agency to sanitize the building before May 3 when the ongoing lockdown restrictions are expected to be relaxed further.
