PANAJI
Opposition legislators, some of whom moved amendments to the motion of thanks to the Governor’s address, on Tuesday severely criticised the Pramod Sawant government for its “failures” on several fronts and touted the claims made by Governor P S Sreedharan Pillai in his address to the House in January as mere sloganeering.
Leader of the Opposition Yuri Alemao in his nearly half-an-hour long speech partly interrupted by the power outage, said the Governor’s claim that the government had ‘zero tolerance’ to corruption was a mere slogan citing the case of allegations made by a former minister and ruling BJP member that he paid a minister Rs 15 to 20 lakh to get his work done.
Alemao also cited some other examples, including the dramatic escape from custody of the police by land-grab scam accused Sulaiman Siddiqui, to suggest that corruption has become all pervasive in the current government’s reign.
He also accused the government of acting against the constitution by tacitly supporting right-wing elements in disturbing the peace and attempting to divide Goans citing the example of the incident in which Bajrang Dal members barged into the house of noted literateur Uday Bhembre, recently.
“When the police remain mute spectators in such incidents it only goes to show that there is tacit support of the government for these right-wing elements,” Alemao said.
The Leader of Opposition was also severely critical of the government’s track record on the economic front and in tackling the rising unemployment scenario in the State.
“Goa is the smallest State with the smallest population but has the highest unemployment rates in the country,” Alemao said.
He also said that the State’s Investment Promotion Board had miserably failed to serve the purpose it had been set up for and no jobs creating investment of any significance has come in the State.
“Other than facilitating hotel and tourism relate projects, the IPB has done nothing. The government should come out with firm data on the number of jobs that have been created with investments in projects cleared by the IPB,” Alemao said.
Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Benaulim MLA, Venzy Viegas highlighted the lethargy in the administration which he said led to inordinate delays in getting minor projects which entail expenditure of even under Rs 5-lakh cleared and in execution stage.
Viegas also criticised the government for large scale diversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes thus setting the trend where individual Goans were going about filling agricultural fields for development.
RGP’s Viresh Borkar questioned the government’s passive stance to Goans being robbed of jobs by non-Goans in the Department of posts. He said, if the government can act now, after dozens of outsiders were deployed in the State as postmen, it shows as its failure for not taking measures to prevent the hiring of the non-Goan postmen at the initial stage itself.
