Goa Diary

Wanted: A place to hide past mistakes
With the State Government in election mode, politicians are looking for face-saving devices to explain some of their unpopular decisions. Last week, former chief minister Luizinho Faleiro, who headed a short-lived Congress government till recently, came up with an original. In wooing university teachers, Faleiro is hard-pressed to explain why as CM, he refused to implement the Fifth Pay Commission salary recommendations for them. He issued a press note blaming the bureaucrats for not informing him that 80 per cent of the outgoings would be from the University Grants Commission coffers and not the State! Faleiro is now promising to increase the retirement age for teachers to 62 years if re-elected!

Neta-babu nexus
Last week, this column spoke of a government official who is busy furthering the interests of a politician even though the State is under President8217;s rule. As it turns out, the official was performing the same duty for the politician whenhe was leader of the Opposition. The official8217;s superior, however, brought the incident to the notice of the concerned minister. But before any action could be taken against the official, the minister defected to the rival camp to help make the Opposition leader chief minister 8212; and everyone conveniently forgot about the violation of service rules.

redtape.com
More people in Goa are buying telephones than elsewhere in the country. According to Union Minister for Telecommunications Jagmohan, every household in the State could soon have a phone.

But unfortunately for the minister, the telephones won8217;t be from his Goa Telecom. Not only is this organisation unable to provide working telephones on a sustainable basis, it is also in danger of missing the internet bus. Applicants have to wait for weeks, if not months, to access the net, though the department claims to give four connections each day.