the goan I network
MARGAO
Town and Country Planning Minister Vijai Sardesai’s ambitious CCTV surveillance cameras project costing Rs 3.68 crore may have been scrapped by South Goa District Collector Anjali Sehrawat, but that has not stopped the traffic police from installing a board of the CCTV monitoring centre cum notice branch at the Fatorda police station.
It’s now over a month since the District Collector has cancelled the administrative approval and expenditure sanction order dated June 23, 2017, for an amount of Rs 3.68 crore for the project.
And though it may take some time before the district authorities take a call on the implementation of the CCTV surveillance camera project under then Rajya Sabha MP Shantaram Naik’s MLPAD scheme, a board displaying the Fatorda city monitoring centre and notice branch continues to be prominently seen at the Fatorda police station.
Sources in the know said that overzealous traffic police officers had moved with alacrity to put up the board at the Fatorda police station on the premise that the CCTV project consisting of about 196 cameras will soon see the light of the day.
Inquiries by The Goan have now revealed that the district authorities are now toying with the idea of re-floating the CCTV camera project, more than a month after Collector Anjali Sehrawat had scrapped the same for want of codal formalities.
Sources even did not rule out the possibility of the District Collector, who is the nodal officer in the implementation of the MPLAD scheme, moving the department of Information and Technology to comply with the codal formalities and finalise a new contractor for the project.
“Given that the district Collector had scrapped the project for want of the codal formalities, the project will be awarded to the contractor only after complying with the tender conditions,” sources informed, adding that the question of handing over the responsibility of finalizing the bids to the department of Information and Technology is not ruled out for the moment.
Officials in the know said the CCTV surveillance cameras project was almost cleared by the district authorities during the tenure of then South Goa Collector, Swapnil Naik.
Based on the finalization of the contractor, the TCP Minister had even launched work on the Rs 3.68 crore ambitious project on Goa Liberation Day last at Gogol in the presence of former Minister Luis Alex Cardozo and work on installing the 196 cameras were supposed to be completed within two months time, before District Collector Sehrawat stepped in last month to scrap the project.
