- DUPLICATION OF PORTUGUESE - DOCUMENTS MUST BE PROBED - Elvidio Miranda For more than twenty years now, successive governments in Goa have been promising jobs to our youth, but alas by and large these promises have not been kept. The Portuguese government provided an avenue to Goans whose fathers were born in Goa before the liberation to register their births in Portugal by enabling them to register the Assento de Nascimento in Portugal, so as to enable their progeny to seek Portuguese passports and thus to be eligible to obtain Portuguese nationality and hence seek employment in UK pre- and post Brexit and the European Union, since Portugal is a member of the 27-block European Community. What would have been the fate of those who would have been stranded without adequate livelihood in Goa because of the inability of the governments to provide them with lucrative jobs. Even the Indian government has not given any entitlements to the Goans after the liberation. Portugal has thus come to the rescue of Goans by allowing them the entitlement of obtaining Portuguese nationality for three generations of Goans who were born to parents in Goa before liberation. However, what is most lamentable is the fact that off late many migrants from neibhouring states have obtained fraudulently Portuguese documents by forgery. Many migrants have changed their names to Goan names so as to be able to procure fake documents and thus apply for Portuguese nationality which entitlement is not provided for them. Goan falsifiers and enablers have to be blamed for having colluded in the making of these fake documents that was done merely for the lure of the lucre, with the tacit understanding of a taluka registrar. The modus operandi was to acquire old Portuguese blank and even pre-signed printed forms from the government offices such as those of the Registo de Nascimento (Birth Register), Certidao Narrativa (first birth certificate used to obtain admission in a Portuguese school prior to and immediately after liberation), and Boletim de Nascimento (an abbreviated Birth certificate) which are all mandatory for applying for Portuguese nationality as essential documents and old Portuguese documents. These forms were filled in with fake names of migrants and with the consent of a registrar, were duplicated and introduced even on line at a price. It is quite easy to determine the forgeries since the various books of the registers of birth are all numbered sequentially and duplication could be very easily detected. People with good calligraphy were involved in filling these forms mostly in Portuguese and then fraudulently registered in the taluka registrar's offices. Even the making of the verification mandatory by the Ministry of External Affairs, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the District Registrar could not crack down on these forgeries, which have now become widespread. Honest applicants have to wait for a longer time to get their genuine documents verified, which for those born before 19th December, 1961 could take as much as two to two and a half years. No determined effort has been made to bring the culprits to book. It is high time that the government should immediately register cases into how these fraudulent documents have been duplicated. There is definite participation of the Registrar of taluka of Salcete in Margao.. An immediate investigation should be launched to seize all these old forms and hold the culprits involved in blatant duplication of Portuguese documents.
