Heated scenes at Mormugao civic meet over inefficient labourers, piles of garbage
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THE GOAN NETWORK
VASCO
The Mormugao Municipal Council (MMC) meeting on Friday witnessed heated scenes on the issue of inefficient labourers and piling up of garbage in all wards of the municipality.
MMC Chairperson Deepak Naik raised the issue and claimed that though some daily wage labourers attend the duty, they fail to work for a full eight-hour period.
“Such labourers should be retrenched and replaced with efficient workers,” suggested Naik.
Objecting to the proposal, Councillor Pascoal D’Souza said the labourers are doing worst type of jobs and they should not be removed.
Councillor Kritesh Gaonkar suggested that all the labourers who don't work for eight hours should be given a break and new labourers should be appointed. “The lady labourers outnumber the male labourers, due to which they fail to carry out necessary work,” said Gaonkar.
Gaonkar brought to the notice of the council that labourers allotted to two municipal gardens do not carry out any work and they should be engaged in other works.
Councillor Fredrick Henrique said as MMC was not in a position to pay revised daily wages, the same work should be given to fixed workers.
After discussion, it was later decided to give break to those workers who are found not working properly and appoint new labourers.
As the labourers' issue died down, there were chaos over the issue of piling of garbage in all the wards of the municipality.
When Murari Bandekar pointed out that garbage has not been cleared from his ward for the last 15 days, Lavina D’Souza, Pascoal and others too joined the debate and said all the wards are full of garbage and the residents from their wards are questioning them.
Lavina requested Chairperson Naik to allot some labourers to clean the ward which is stinking, while Pascoal and Bandekar also demanded to engage labourers to clean garbage from their wards.
Naik requested the councillors to cooperate and give him 15 days to tackle the garbage problem and said he has appointed contractors to clear the garbage.
“I have been discussing the matter for the last 15 days and arrived at a conclusion to appoint contractors to clear the garbage. From December 1, we have appointed three contractors and each contractor will take care of six wards and by month end, garbage will be cleared. Please bear with me,” requested Naik.
