the goan I network
PANAJI
The tourism department’s beach cleaning tender process, which emerged as a bone of contention between Tourism Minister Manohar Ajgaonkar and Deputy Speaker Michael Lobo, may take time to run its course and a new agency appointed but in the interim the State government has decided to prevail on Drishti Marine to resume handling the task.
A decision to re-engage Drishti for the task was taken at a meeting with Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Wednesday and the administration is engaged with the agency to bring it back on board, Ajgaonkar told The Goan.
Drishti Marine had been handling the chore for over a year and stopped its operations on November 12 after its work order for the services formally ended. The move forced the Tourism ministry and Goa Tourism Development Corporation to hurriedly engage local contractors and labourers on a casual basis to clean up the garbage piling on Goan beaches thronged by tourists even as the season is peaking.
Ajgaonkar said, he had a meeting with Parrikar on the issue and they have decided to rope in Drishti till the tender process is completed because they had been doing the job satisfactorily.
“We decided to re-engage the services of Drishti. They were doing a satisfactory job,” Ajgaonkar said, adding that he had made it clear at the meeting with the Chief Minister that the tender process will however not be compromised. The agency which stopped providing the beach cleaning services on November 12 claiming that its work order had ended on that day had also written to the Chief Secretary Dharmendra Sharma, airing its grievance over the tender conditions making it ineligible to bid.
“The tender process to appoint a new agency will run its course. It will take some time and the tender process will be executed with utmost transparency,” Azgaonkar said.
Meanwhile State government officials were in touch with Drishti Marine and talking to it on re-commencing the beach cleaning operations which they had ceased from November 12 after the work order formally ended.
Drishti Marine on Wednesday said it was open to continuing offering assistance to the State government within its financial capability and limits.
“Drishti has offered support to the State government in its time of need in the past. We will continue to offer assistance as much as we possibly can within our limits and financial capability if called to do so,” a statement from the agency said.
Earlier, Ajgaonkar’s request to the agency to continue providing the beach cleaning services on an informal arrangement until such time as the tendering process to appoint a new contractor is completed had gone unheeded by the agency.
The tiff between the tourism ministry and the agency, which also provides lifeguards and beach safety services to the government of Goa, was reportedly over the conditions in the tender floated by the Tourism Department which makes Drishti ineligible to participate.
In the melee, Lobo who represents Calangute which is a tourism hotbed, had demanded that the tender process be cancelled as the tourism department was incompetent to oversee the process and instead the Goa Waste Management Corporation, which he heads be entrusted the responsibility.
Ajgaonkar has slammed Lobo’s attempt to interfere in the matter and is adamant that tender floated by Tourism Department will run its course.
“Transparency and all procedures will be followed. There will be no compromise,” Ajgaonkar said, adding that the infamy of the past will not be allowed to repeat at any cost.
He was referring to the previous BJP-led coalition government being forced to scrap the beach cleaning tenders overseen by his predecessor Dilip Parulekar.
The tender was scrapped after the process was complete as civil society and the Opposition had alleged a scam. Drishti was engaged for the task after the scrapping of the tender.
