the goan I network
PANAJI
The Goa cabinet on Friday decided to append ‘waste management’ to the nomenclature of the Department of Science and Technology giving technical finality to the move to create the cabinet portfolio of Minister for Waste Management months after cabinet member Michael Lobo was allotted the ministry.
The government department hitherto the Department of Science and Technology, will now be known as the Department of Science, Technology and Waste Management.
The full-strength cabinet of Chief Minister Pramod Sawant which met at the Secretariat’s ministerial block on Friday morning also decided to push forward for another five years the redemption of the State’s Rs 20-crore share capital in the financially tottering Goa State Co-operative Bank Ltd.
The State’s apex co-operative bank was mandated to redeem the State’s share capital holding at the end of 2018 fiscal, but on Friday, the Sawant-led cabinet agreed to relax the redemption clause for another five years.
Sawant, who addressed the customary post-cabinet press conference with half-a-dozen other ministers flanking him, said the State government after five years will have to review whether to have the share capital redeemed
or not.
Meanwhile, the cabinet played Santa for the security personnel deployed by the Human Resource Corporation in the Education Department when it passed a resolution to regularise their services in the department.
Sawant said, the cabinet also decided to regularise the pay-scales of technical staff at the government polytechnics by factoring in the AICTE regulations in the 7th Pay Commission pay structure.
He said the additional burden on the State exchequer due to the hike will be around Rs 30 lakh per year. They will be paid the arrears of the last two years as well, he added.
Responding to a query, Sawant said there was no question of engaging with the striking lifeguards of Drishti Marine, the contractor engaged for beach safety, over their demand to absorb them as employees of the tourism department.
Sawant said the agitating lifeguards have no connection in employment matters with the government and they were employees of the contractor.
“There is no reason or ground to even consider their demand,” Sawant said.
