PANAJI
Power outages, an issue that often crops up in Goa’s public discourse and is a constant source earning brickbats for the dispensation, was the ammunition with which the Opposition legislators ambushed the government in the Goa Legislative Assembly on Tuesday.
And after all the criticism, in which a few legislators from the treasury benches also joined in, Power Minister Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavalikar, proffered a solution in one-line: Underground cabling to replace the overhead transmission and distribution lines across Goa.
When several of the members rose in turn to tell Dhavalikar that ‘underground cable lines’ also do fail, he said he has a solution for that too “ a fault detecting device designed by students of the Goa Engineering College (GEC) “ which will be fitted at every sub-station to detect and locate faults.
The department is also in the process of procuring a cable fault detection van worth Rs 3.8 crore for quick detection of faults, he added.
Dhavalikar gave no timelines for execution and completion of the massive underground cabling across the State but only said works worth at least Rs 40 crore related to underground cabling has already been taken up in each of the 40 constituencies.
The discussion was initiated following a calling attention motion moved by Vijai Sardesai and Carlos Alvares-Ferreira raising public anxiety over the frequent power failures faced in the State.
“Some of the overhead LT conductors are the same aluminium ones which were installed back in 1965. They have gone brittle and snap whenever they are worked on. I have begun replacing these,” Dhavalikar said.
Earlier, Sardesai, Alvares-Ferreira, Opposition Leader Yuri Alemao and all the other four Opposition MLAs “ AAP’s Venzy Viegas and Cruz Silva, RGP’s Viresh Borkar and Congress’ Altone D’Costa, severely criticised Dhavalikar’s ministry for the frequent failures in electricity supply witnessed across the State.
They were also joined in by a handful of members, including Delilah Lobo, Rajesh Phaldesai and Jit Arolkar from the treasury benches as well who raised concerns about the erratic power supply situation in their respective constituencies.
