MARGAO
The Margao Municipal Council once again witnessed a change in administrative guard on Friday with the government shunting out Chief Officer Rohit Kadam after presiding over the affairs of the civic body for a little over four months.
In an order issued on Friday, the government has appointed South Goa Zilla Panchayat Chief Executive Officer Manuel Barretto as the new MMC Chief Officer in place of Rohit Kadam. In the same order, the government has transferred and posted Rohit Kadam as the new South Goa Zilla Panchayat Chief Executive Officer.
The two officers had assumed charge of their respective offices only a couple of months ago. While Kadam assumed office on May 20 last, Manuel was appointed the South Goa ZP CEO just three months ago.
Sources in the know pointed out that the two officers are expected to take up their postings earlier next week.
The transfer talk was doing the rounds in the corridors of the civic body for some time now, with sources saying the officer had asked for a move from the post on personal grounds.
During his short stint as an officer after succeeding then Chief Officer Agnelo Fernandes, Kadam has tried to ensure transparency in the administration and put the systems in place. He set up a public grievance cell in the civic body for the benefit of the public and tried to streamline the administration by personally taking rounds of the various municipal sections daily.
Kadam also tried to streamline the tax collections by giving targets to the taxation section to tone up the recovery mechanism.
On the other hand, the South Goa Zilla Panchayat CEO Manuel Barretto had set in motion the process to put in the place the district draft-development plan by making the defunct District Planning Committee functional. Manuel only recently had discussions with GIPARD officials to hold training programmes for the panchayat and municipal representatives on how to go about submitting development plans to the District Planning Committee for the preparation of the district draft-development plan.
