When the Goa legislative assembly discussed Goa's Cooperative Sector, many, especially the thousands of families whose bread-earners have large chunks of their money stuck in cooperative banks and smaller credit cooperative societies gone bust, must've been keenly watching and following to see that silver lining amidst the clouds of their despair -- that flicker of hope, that their money would be recoverable.
Did they? Not really, we are afraid, because Minister for Cooperation Subhash Shirodkar spoke much about the virtues of the Cooperative movement in the State but inspired little confidence, if any, that the supervisory apparatus of the Registrar of Cooperative Societies (RCS) is taking any steps to liquidate the assets of the rogue cooperatives and pay back the depositors' money.
Shirodkar was at pains, and perhaps not without reason, to explain how Goa's Cooperative institutions have for decades helped mofussil Goans fulfill their micro entrepreneurial dreams with timely and easy credit at a time when mainstream banking players, particularly the nationalised banks, never even gave a second look at their quest for loans.
Not that the minister did not dwell on some of those rogue Co-operatives -- Visionary Society and a couple of others -- which went bust and have depositors running from pillar to post in their bid to recover their hard earned money.
However, beyond promising to ensure punitive action like filing FIRs against the rogue entities and streamlining the accounting and audit supervision, including computerising all cooperatives by the end of next year, Shirodkar had nothing at all to say on the fate of the depostors who've lost money.
A suggestion for instituting "concurrent audits" for all cooperatives by the RCS so frauds are detected early by the legislator from Benaulim, Venzy Viegas, too found no favour with the Minister.
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Dhavalikar's promising
proposal for 'floating
solar plants' at dams
It's been some years that Goa's politicos and policymakers began talking of looking for non-conventional sources of power with solar power topping the agenda.
However, beyond verbal announcements, policies on paper and discussions in the seminar circuit, the government has been tottering in actual realisation of solar power production, even flip-flopping on the subsidy schemes designed to spur private individuals to set up solar panels on their rooftops which take care of their own consumption and plough back the surplus into the State's grid.
However, if the words spoken in the Assembly by Power Minister Ramkrisnha (Sudin) Dhavalikar, who also holds charge of the lately established New and Renewable Energy Department, are to be taken at face value, then Goa's push for clean solar energy may get a leg-up.
According to Dhavalikar, the State government is in possession of a concrete proposal from the Himachal Pradesh government's SJVN Green Energy Limited (SGEL) to set up four floating solar power plants at reservoirs of four dams -- Amthane, Anjunem, Chapoli and Selaulim -- with a collective projected output of 197 megawatts of power.
The project report submitted by SGEL involves setting up these plants at the reservoirs of the four dams with an investment of approximately Rs 1,300 crore, Dhavalikar said in the Assembly but did not spell out if the investment will come from the company or be borne by the State.
Nonetheless, with Goa's current solar power production at a meagre 24.2 MW, mostly by individuals setting up roof-top solar units at a subsidy cost to the government of Rs 7 crore, the idea seems promising, on paper at least, to meet the 150 megawatts of solar power target set for Goa to be achieved by 2027.
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Colvale jail will swing from
mobile smuggling 'adda'
to a reform centre: CM
The perennial problem of mobile phones and other goodies sneaking through the porous jail administration and into the hands of jailbirds lodged at the Colvale Central Jail had rocked the House.
However, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, visibly shaken up by the allegations made by the Opposition legislators that a rape accused actually made contact with his minor victim via phone while in custody, has assured the House that illegal use of cell phones in the jail will be stopped, one hundred per cent.
He said, a DySP-ranked officer is probing the incident and claimed that only 2-3 per-cent of the jail's inmates are involved in such mischief.
Sawant also said that the jail administration is now with the Goa Police and the central jail is being transformed into a "Reform Centre" where inmates will be put through rigorous training and counselling to reform them.
