A retirement party/meeting was held on the 26th January,2003 at The Pilot in Coventry in honour of Retiring president Bhupenbhai and his wife Bhanuben who are due to emigrate to Goa, India.
12:00noon-2:00pm: Getting together and entertainment.
2:00pm-3:30pm: Dinner.

Meeting commenced at 3:30pm with the presentation of flower bouquet to both Bhupenbhai and Bhanuben.

The current president Haribhai then gave a speech about what had been done since the previous meeting. He then mentioned of other issues that needed to be discussed at this current meeting:

Schools in Chijgam.

Two rooms have been built for a new school but another room was needed, and the government has given 50% of the money needed to build this room.

Mandir

The mandir in Chijgam needs to be repainted and money is being sent over from the Canada to help with the funds. Contributions from the Chijgam members in the UK is also needed to help raise these funds.

Water and Drainage systems.

There are quite a few water and drainage problems which need to be improved facilities need to be built to resolve. The drainage problem is damaging local roads in and around the gam. The cost of fixing this problem is quite expensive, but again members in the USA and Canada are willing to contribute.
Also the government have offered 10 lakhs for a water tank to help improve the system. Any additional costs needs to be taken out of our own pockets.
What also needs to be resolved is where the best location in the gam for where the water tank should be built.

Roads.

Another problem which has arisen is the need for some of the Chijgam roads to be widened by around 4ft to improve vehicle flow in both directions.
These are issues and problems which have been raised, what we’d like to see is for the younger members of the gam here in the UK to have more of a say and input in these meetings, because it is with the youth where the future lies.
Any projects started now need to be continued with in the long term.

Before the next meting a letter needs to be sent out to India asking for the estimated costs of the projects mentioned above and also whether they themselves would be willing to help with the costs. We need to make sure also that any improvements taken out in Chijgam will be maintained by the people there.

Other news….

One of our members in Coventry, Manoj recently went to Canada and during his stay there he went to a Chijgam meeting and approximately 15 members.

We will also be celebrating the youth members achievements on the Chijgam website: ie, graduations, exam results etc.

Discussions are underway of introducing Chijgam meetings aimed at just the youth.

Any youth projects which they may be interested in should and would be considered.
The next meeting will be taking place in Wednesbury, in the West Midlands. It will be sometime during the summer though a definite date as not yet been set.
The meeting ended with a presentation of a bottle of champagne and a gift to the retiring president, Mr Bupenbhai and Mrs Bhanuben.

Meeting closed at 4.30pm.

Report prepared by Paresh A Patel – Assistant Secretary