MARGAO
Margao Municipal Council’s long-delayed pre-monsoon works, costing Rs 16 lakh, threatens to go haywire, even as the pre-monsoon rains lashed the city throughout Thursday.
Of the two contractors shortlisted to supply labourers for the drain desilting works, one of the contractors has declined to start the drain desilting work. The second contractor has started the work as scheduled, but questions are being raised in the corridors of the civic body, whether the Municipality will achieve the objective of clearing the drains before the monsoons or the plastic and dry waste lying in the drains will be washed away by the rains into the adjoining river Sal.
Given the situation, MMC Chairperson Lyndon Pereira is believed to have called for a meeting with the two contractors and the City Fathers on Thursday morning. The City Fathers are believed to have expressed concern that the threat of withdrawal by one of the drain desilting contractors would only mean the drains in their wards would remain clogged and silted in the ensuing monsoons.
The MMC has announced with much fanfare the ambitious project to rope in contractors to supply labourers to carry out the work of desilting of the city drains ahead of the monsoons. The work, however, got delayed as the civic body took the decision last month and the tender was opened only recently at a cost of Rs 16 lakh.
And, with the pre-monsoon showers lashing the city in the last two days and the MET department predicting monsoons advancing this year, sources in the know wonder whether the pre-monsoon work will achieve the intended objective this year.
A Municipal engineer informed that the Municipality should put a halt to the desilting works in the monsoons which arrives early this year.
