MARGAO
The Margao Municipal Council meeting witnessed an uproar on Monday after some of the councillors from Margao asserted that the city is discriminated against on the development front compared to the Fatorda area of the
city while demanding equal treatment.
Matters came to a head with Goa Forward-backed councillor Lyndon Pereira alleging that action against vendors is scuttled upon phone calls from the Margao MLA, evoking strong reaction from Congress-backed councillors Doris Texeira and Manoj Masurkar.
Chairperson Babita Prabhudesai intervened to calm down frayed tempers by requesting members not to take names of MLAs when they were not present.
As the council was discussing the matter of how the civic body did not provide workers to the wards in Margao, former Chairperson Arthur D’Silva while demanding discrimination against Margao, sarcastically told the powers that be to take the municipality to Fatorda.
Heated exchanges broke out again at the time of approving development works in the wards, when some members hailing from Margao questioned the estimates approved for the wards in Fatorda, while demanding equal treatment for all the 25 wards.
Even on the question of door-to-door waste collection, city fathers from Margao questioned the rationale of outsourcing waste collection from Fatorda to a private contractor and leaving the Margao wards to the civic workers to manage. They claimed that waste segregation would have shown better results if door-to-door collection of waste from all the 25 wards was outsourced to the private party.
Councillor Rupesh Mahatme created a flutter when he alleged that a municipal worker was involved in taking a school bag for his child without paying money to the trader. While saying that the incident has only brought bad name to the civic body, Mahatme demanded that the Chairperson order an inquiry into the episode.
The Chairperson later asked Chief Officer Sidhivinayak Naik to conduct a probe and suspend the worker if found guilty.
Many a councillor also demanded to know whether the Chairperson was aware of the allegations of extortion of money at the Purumentachem fair at the Old Market. Babita complained that her office did not receive a single complain of extortion resorted by people collecting fees from
the vendors.
