Navhind Times | 1 year ago | 26-12-2021 | 12:03 am
2 playgrounds to be developed, smart classrooms built, solar poles laid under Xeldem-Barcem clusterRoque Dias | NTMargao: Around five years after the launch of the Shyama Prasad Mukerjee Rurban Mission by the Centre, the state rural development agency (RDA) has finally paved the way to start work on four out of 54 works proposed under the Xeldem-Barcem cluster in Quepem.Work on development of playgrounds at Avedem and Xeldem in Quepem, development of smart classrooms of eight government high schools in rural areas and installation of solar lamp poles in all the 11 panchayat areas listed in the Xeldem-Barcem cluster will commence in the first week of January 2022.The central government had allocated two clusters – one in Xeldem-Barcem in Quepem constituency for South and Saligao area in North Goa as part of 300 clusters allocated across the country under the scheme that was introduced by the Centre in 2016.The main objective of the scheme is to stimulate local economic development, enhance basic services and take up well-planned progress to largely benefit the locals.Stating that the works on all the four projects will start on January 7, state RDA official Chinmay Morajkar said, “We are taking the expenditure sanction by December 28 and the work orders will be issued by December 30 before the imposition of the Model Code of Conduct.”Work on a total of 20 projects under the Xeldem-Barcem cluster is likely to start by the end of January and completed within a year.Interestingly, the Saligao cluster is still in the planning state. Morajkar said that the central RDA ministry’s approval is awaited, adding, “Once the approval is granted, funds would be released. Developing of the Saligao cluster will take some time.”The central government has proposed to develop the cluster on a 60-40 per cent Centre-state funding basis. Each cluster was to be developed in three phases expending Rs 10 crore in each phase.With no headway for first two years, secretary of Union Ministry of RDA had issued a warning to Goa Chief Secretary on January 23, 2018 that if he is not serious on executing the two sanctioned clusters, the central government would re-allocate them to other deserving states. Things started moving thereafter, but again got stuck. There was also a long delay in giving the state share of Rs 3.60 crore for the Xeldem-Barcem cluster.Much time was also lost in verifying the proposed projects since the same were also taken up by village panchayats, PWD and other agencies. The RDA officials said that they could not do much in the year 2020 and first half of the year 2021 due to COVID-19 pandemic.The scheme that was introduced by the Centre in 2016 only months prior to the state Assembly election of 2017 is taking shape at a time when the state is preparing for yet another election though the Centre had planned to complete the works within three years.
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