First, health minister Vishwajit Rane falls prey to an alleged hoax call and falsely declares to the world, on the basis of that call, Goa’s first positive case of COVID-19. He then seeks to blame a doctor from GMC and the alleged hoax caller for the goof-up, not once owning up his own lapse of relying on a telephone call and not hard proof of the test report, to make the announcement that a patient in Goa has tested positive.
Second, teams of the health department miserably failed to quarantine former minister Francisco (Mickky) Pacheco after it was discovered he had travelled on a Dubai-Goa-Bengaluru flight in which a woman from Bengaluru who tested positive had also traveled. The authorities were also at sea, trying to identify and quarantine 42 other passengers who had alighted from that plane at Dabolim.
Third, at the administrative level, the flip-flops of the Pramod Sawant government were most visible on two other fronts: the education sector where the student community was kept on tenterhooks as to what’s happening to the end of their current academic year and the indecisiveness to take a call on postponing an inconsequential Zilla Panchayat poll which it eventually did following the intervention of the High Court.
Chaos in education
The first hint that the Goa government was considering suspending school from Class I till Class IX came on Friday, March 13, when Health Minister Vishwajit Rane said he had put forward the proposal to the Chief Minister.
At that time however, Rane said the government “should allow the exams of Stds X and XII to continue”.
This was on the day the Goa government invoked the Epidemic Diseases Act 1897, when a second patient in the country succumbed to COVID-19.
However, no sooner did the Maharashtra government order its schools to shut down, the Goa government hurriedly followed suit. Chief Minister Pramod Sawant held a “high level meeting” on March 14 after which he announced that schools in the State would shut.
The Education Department, headed by IAS officer Vandana Rao, was quick to come on record to say that the scheduled exams would however be held as planned. The Department added equally quickly that shutting down schools applied only to the students, and not the staff, who were expected to report to work as usual, even though there was no work to do.
A day later, on March 15, which was a Sunday, Goa University’s Vice-Chancellor Prof Varun Sahni called for an emergency meeting with all deans of faculties and other big-wigs to decide the course of action for the University. But unlike the Directorate of Education who stuck to its guns about exams being held as per schedule, the University showed greater concern for its students as well as those of its affiliated colleges.
Exams which were scheduled to start from April 5 were re-scheduled to be held from April 15 onwards. The circular issued by the Registrar of the University on that day also announced that the government had called for classes for colleges/university to be suspended from March 16 to 31.
But the drama did not end for the student community in the State. As the number of reported Covid-19 cases in India increased, officials started second-guessing their decision to let students come for exams and put their health at risk.
On March 16, officials from the Goa Board left it up to each individual school management to either do away with the exams of Stds IX and XI and calculate the aggregate marks of the students based on previous three examinations and projects. (From Std IX onwards, students are promoted based on merit.)
The Board also left it up to the schools to postpone the exams and hold them at a later date, if they so wished.
On March 17, the Director of Education Rao issued a circular which announced that exams from Stds I to VIII were to be cancelled. (These exams are inconsequential as everyone gets promoted anyway.) Yet, Rao’s circular maintained that exams from IX to XII would be held as scheduled.
March 18 seemed to be a quiet day on the education front as there were no circulars issued and no new rumours in the air either. But the end was far from near. As the dreaded Covid kept spreading across the world, reports of India not testing enough patients started surfacing, and the Central government advised working from home wherever possible, we learnt from the grape vine that the Education Department “may” let teachers stay home too. A circular permitting this is yet to see the light of day, however.
Which brings us to March 20. By this day, the confusion brought in by the pandemic seeped through to the officials as well. Director Rao first issued a circular stating that “All examinations for Classes IX to XII scheduled from March 21 onwards are postponed till further orders. This includes Board Exams for Classes X and XII.”
The circular spread like wild fire, but moments later, the Director issued a “clarification” to the circular stating that the decision about the Class X Board Exams would be conveyed by March 29.
On March 21, finally, the Directorate of Higher Education issued the circular that teachers in the College section can stop reporting for work till March 31. School teachers across the state meanwhile continue to wait with bated breath for a similar circular entitling them to work from home.
After mining, tourism
dealt death blow
The devastating impact on the hospitality industry from the fallout of the global pandemic couldn’t have come at a worse time for Goa. Already limping from the body blow of an all-but-dead iron ore mining sector, the State’s economy is staring at doom with the visible blow to its twin - tourism.
The industry will suffer by about Rs 1,000 crores if we are to believe the claims of the Tourism and Travel Association of Goa (TTAG).
We actually got down to crunching down the numbers from a few smaller players in the hotel business and learnt that smaller hotels could be looking at losses of up to Rs 10-15 lakhs until the start of the next season, spending as they are anywhere between Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 on simply keeping their facilities running for the next six months.
The TTAG on the other hand has estimated a whopping Rs 1,000 crore hit to the industry due to the COVID-19 threat.
The trade body which generally represents the ‘big boys’ also claims that around 60,000-75,000 jobs will be lost but these could be limited if timely measures are adopted.Hotels have gone empty and envisaging a long, long limp back to normalcy, TTAG is hoping that the State and Central governments will throw them some sops in the form of tax holidays at least for six months. Another measure it has suggested after it held an ‘emergency meet’ is a moratorium for about to nine months on repayments of all EMIs and interest on the loans and overdrafts individual businesses have already availed.
Less said the better of Goa’s manufacturing sector dominated mostly by SMEs who run their units from the nearly half-a-dozen industrial estates hosted by the Goa Industrial Development Corporation.
Even as we sat down to write what you are reading, we were flooded with messages that said, “the Verna industrial area is buzzing as usual. Workers are going to their factories just as normal. No one is belling the cat.”
Why would anyone when profit is the only motive of industry?
“All in all there’s gloom. Things are not looking good for the near future so most enterprises are continuing as usual until some authority clamps down and imposes a lockdown,” said a top entrepreneur who represents industry on several government bodies.March 13 : Vishwajit Rane proposes suspending school for Classes I to IX
March 14 : CM declares schools across Goa shut, Education Department clarifies staff must continue to report to campuses, exams as per schedule.
March 15 : GU declares classes for University/colleges suspended till March 31, exams re-scheduled.
March 17 : Directorate of Education announces exams for Classes I to VIII are cancelled, all other exams to go on.
March 20 : Directorate of Education issues two circulars: one saying exams from Stds IX to XII including Board exams stand cancelled till further notice. Second clarifying that decision on X Std Board exam will be announced on March 29.
