Who cares about sons of the soil -January 28,2008

Calling their bluff
Remember the number of times Luizinho Faleiro said industries would be forced to employ Goans although we just can't seem to live on their miserly salaries, and the times Aleixo Sequeira said SEZs will provide jobs for Goans, or the times Vishwajit Rane and the Dhavlikar duo have also said that, also Chandrakant Kavlekar eternally confused between SEZ and food park. Well, it happened that the MLA Damodar Naik asked for the names, addresses and date of joining of all workers employed by the companies in the Cipla group in Goa. The amazing answer from Digambar Kamat was: "Details such as names etc are not maintained by government." If this were a mathematical equation that needed solving, Einstein could not have been cleverer. If, Kamat cannot force Cipla to provide basic answers concerning an emotive issue that rocked his government, what good are their promises? It also crossed my mind, that the issue is not whether the government has the details but rather, that it is morally and constitutionally bound to give the answers to the Assembly.

Sons of which soil?
Yet, another question asked was to give the number of Goan workers. This time Cipla vaguely replied: "The total number of local recruits/Goan origin is 1728 (contract and regular employees.)" Evidence that Cipla has no clue on who is Goan or who is not and possibly does not care because local recruits can mean any one from Jammu to Kanyakumari. For the record Cipla cleverly parceled off its group (you can guess why) into seven different companies employing 2396 workers. How I wish Naik had asked how much Cipla, whose annual turnover runs into hundreds of crores, pays its workers, how many are contract workers and, how many times these workers are rotated or their contracts terminated so that they are never deemed to be permanent workers.

Guarding royals
Taking into considering inflation and the changing dollar values over decades, it must have cost the Portuguese far less to maintain their army and police in Goa for centuries than what it costs you to protect Goa's new rulers. Last week you learnt that 111 police protect the Governor and 57 police protect the two Ranes. Here's a new angle to this. More police guard the Ranes than are stationed in the Verna, Sanguem, Quepem, Maina Curtorim, Valpoi, Collem and Agaicaim police stations. In fact Vasco has a force of 57 police and Colva 58. In 2007-08 it cost you Rs26.48 lakh to protect Pratapsing Rane, Rs28.92 lakh to protect Digambar Kamat, Rs9.06 to protect Ravi Naik and Rs18.64 lakh to protect Vishwajit Rane. In 2006-07 it cost you Rs66.27 lakh to protect Pratapsing Rane and Rs11 lakh to protect Wilfred De Souza. Since 2005-06 it has cost you Rs62,03 lakh to protect Raj Bhavan and Rs757.57 lakh to maintain the CISF there. And this is only a tiny part of what is being spent.

Bearing the cross of being Goan
Gregory Fernandes of Agonda left his homeland to work abroad because of the miserly salaries in Goa. He was killed in a possibly racist attack on him and buried last week. His Uncle Fr. Diogo Fernandes who lives in the US told me the Goa government did not offer any financial compensation, nor did it did it take up the issue with New Delhi. It did nothing, period. The MLA Chandrakant Kavlekar and MP Francisco Sardinha did not call up the family or show up at the funeral. The Fernandes family has not asked the government for any help because like most Goans they know it is futile.
Fr. Diogo told me he couldn't find the words to describe the compassion shown by a British police officer called Crossland who became his personal driver and host while he was in England and hand-held him through the murder scene and investigation and even took him to the agency where a claim for compensation was made. The officer put Fr. Diogo in touch with other officials and these are his exact words describing the help he got, "Even as a priest I have never seen such compassion."
On the either hand Digambar Kamat donated Rs15 lakh of your tax money to the All India Konkani Parishad and will travel to Ernakulam on February 1 and spend more of your money. Perhaps it doesn't pay to be a Goan any longer because the government it was revealed in the Assembly recently gave the Bengali Cultural Association, Panjim a grant-in-aid of Rs40,000 in May 2006, the Gujarati Jagruti Mahila Mandal, Margao Rs50,000 in November 2006, the Bengali Cultural Association, Panjim Rs100,00 in December 2006 and another Rs100,000 in June 2007.

Zero parking tolerance
Will real estate prices go up in the two zero tolerances zones being set up by the Goa police? They could, as these will be the only two safe places to live in because the rest of Goa will continue to be the deathtrap it has become. On the other hand the police could also remove the zero parking zones set up by many shop, garage and restaurant owners to prevent cars parking in front of them like the hotel owner who placed broken tiles on the road. There is a charcoal selling van (white) that DGP Brar can see from his window, occupying parking space for two cars. Opposite Hotel Fidalgo, a cement dealer permanently occupies parking space. A steel trader near the Dhume clinic keeps his wheelbarrow on the road. One garage opposite the warehouse in Junta House has no parking signboards on the road. There are many more examples.