AGNELO PEREIRA
MAPUSA: Although Bal Panchayats have been established in many panchayats in Bardez, very few have been active, one of which is from Verla-Canca.
Credit goes to the Vera-Canca Bal Panchyat for having conducted a survey in identifying children in the age group of 0 to 18 years in the village.
A group of eight Bal Panchayat child members moved around the village and conducted a survey of 100 households to identify the number of children between 0-18 years of age in the village.
They have also collected details of these children on whether they have been attending anganwadis, schools and also accessed the number of dropouts.
The Bal Panchayat child members were assisted by Leena Kadam, a Child Rights facilitator of the Children’s Rights in Goa.
“All credit goes to the eight Bal Panchayat child members of the village who have collected the data. We only assisted them,” Kadam said while speaking to The Goan.
Kadam and her team are in charge of six Bal Panchayats “ Verla-Canca, Sodiem, Anjuna, Assagao, Arambol and Morjim.
For the job well done, the eight Bal Panchayat child members “ Sachin Pawar, Varsha Goswami, Suraj Salgaonkar, Shahista Tashildar, Annie D’Souza, Manisha Khademani, Laxman Hadfadkar and Asif Manigar “ were recently felicitated by the Village Child Committee (VCC).
Kishan Pandit, a Bal Panchayat child member, was also awarded for designing the best logo for the Verla-Canca VCC.
The felicitation was held during a VCC meeting presided by the Chairperson, Laxmikant Bicholkar who is also a member of the Village Panchayat.
Appreciating the tasks taken up by the Bal Panchayat, Verla Canca Sarpanch Milton Marques assured the children to make the village child-friendly.
He assured to open a new library in the village panchayat to encourage children to read books and also expressed his desire to help the Bal Panchayat financially.
He also planned to build a playground behind the Sacred Heart High School and to start a canteen near the school, which would be run by the school.
The sarpanch also said that he has donated a vehicle to collect garbage from the dustbins kept in villages.
“Every Monday, the vehicle will move around to collect garbage from the school and the surrounding areas,” he said.
Kadam disclosed that Bal Sabhas for Bal Panchayat child members are organized twice a year. “The next programme for Bal Panchayat will be a medical camp for students, which will be held at the start of the academic year,” Kadam said.
