MARGAO
The controversial sopo fee collection issue took the centrestage at the special meeting of the Council after a section of councillors made a forceful plea to scrap the experience clause in the tender, even as the Municipal Chairperson Lyndon Pereira decided to keep the issue in abeyance.
The Council’s decision implies that the MMC will not be in a position to appoint a new contractor and will be left with no option than to collect the sopo fees departmentally.
When the proposal for extension of the sopo contract came up for discussion, councillor Ganashyam Shirodkar questioned the rationale behind extending the contract when the previous contractor was no more collecting the sopo.
When the Chief Officer pointed out that the sopo tender could not be taken to its logical conclusion since the civic body had received a lone bid, Ganashyam said the CPWD manual provides for procedure to accept the lone bid, which was not followed by the civic body.
Ganashyam was on his feet again when the Chief Officer pointed out that the tender could not be accepted since the bidder had no three-year experience. The councillor pointed out that the opinion of legal retainer, Adv Cleofato Coutinho was clear that the three-year experience ceiling has no legal standing and that the tender should have no restrictions to get as many bidders as possible. Ganashyam warned to take the Chief Officer to task if the Council gives an extension to the outgoing contractor and impose the experience clause in the sopo tender.
Chairperson Lyndon Pereira, however, insisted on retaining the experience clause and later ruled to keep the matter in abeyance.
Incidentally, the Chief Officer said that departmental collection of the sopo fees has resulted in a loss of around Rs 6 lakh per month and urged the City Fathers to take a call on floating the tender.
During discussion, councillor Mahesh Amonkar claimed that a group led by ex-councillor is involved in collecting sopo from outside the wholesale fish market. There was uproar at the meeting after a Municipal employee testified that sopo fees are being collected by a group of persons.
The Chief Officer, however, ruled out lodging a complaint with the police, saying it is for the people from whom the sopo fees is being collected to lodge the complaint, without realising that the illegal exercise was causing loss to the civic body.
