PANAJI
The State government is considering setting up a ‘record library’ in a bid to safely store and maintain thousands of records from various departments that are dumped across various departments often in precarious condition.
Speaking to The Goan, Chief Town Planner Dr S T Putturaju said that the documents were important and ideally should not be destroyed, even though departments are forced to destroy them on account of lack of space or because they are eaten by white ants.
“Such a project will benefit everyone. The general public will know where to find old records. There will be special librarians to maintain and keep the records, everything will be in one place and there won’t be a need to dance from department to department,” Putturaju said.
He said that it was important that records from the Department of Survey and Land Records, the Revenue Department as well as the TCP Department are well maintained as they are important.
The Town and Country Planning Department has already moved a note to the government in this regard.
“They way today people give importance to records of Portuguese days, the future generations will want today’s records to be maintained,” Putturaju added.
The laws allow the government to destroy records once every few years, however not many departments follow this.
While records prior to 1961 are maintained by the Department of Archives and Archaeology, the records after that are maintained by the respective departments.
“Let there be a system where once the record is more than five years old it automatically is transferred to the record library,” Putturaju said.
Records in government offices are often kept in dusty and tattered conditions with no government officers willing to touch these records.
The TCP department earlier had dedicated record keepers, however after their retirement the posts have remained vacant.
It is not clear how soon the government will move on this proposal.
