Human Rights Awareness programme at Margao District in Goa

The Commission continued with its programme of visits to 28 selected districts to understand local problems and assess levels of awareness about human rights. The district chosen for the visit in February was Margao in Goa, and Justice B.C. Patel, Member, led a team comprising Secretary General A.K. Jain, Special Rapporteur R.K. Bhargava and Director Sanjay Dubey. The team found that environmental pollution from mining, the wide spread of HIV/AIDS, pedophilia and drug addiction were major concerns.
During its visit from 25th to 27th February, the team organized a workshop for Panchayat, District and State officials on human rights awareness and the enforcement of these rights. The team also visited schools, primary health centres, community health centres, anganwadi centres, grampanchayat offices, jails, police lock-ups and fair price shops.
Though pedophilia was a major local worry, and was widely reported in the media, the team found that there was no data base from which an assessment could be made of the scale of the problem; this lacuna needs to be corrected.
On the positive side, the district had a high literacy rate. Villages had well-equipped Panchayat Bhawans. The State Government has several innovative schemes: for instance, each household is provided free computers under the Cyber Scheme against a loan repayable in 20 years. Girls are given bicycles free of cost.
The team's inspection of the District Jail showed that conditions there were largely satisfactory. The jail has a well maintained video conferencing room which was being put to good use. However, contrary to the provision of the jail manual, prisoners were allowed to keep food in their cells and the pantry was not properly maintained.