the goan I network
MARGAO
Congress MLA Reginaldo Lourenco fired a salvo at Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar for what he termed as his failure in fulfilling the deadlines on governance, including the pet projects such as garbage and plastic-free and open defecation-free State.
In a letter addressed to the Chief Minister, the three-time Congress MLA drew the notice of Parrikar to the fact that both BJP-led governments in 2012-2017 and the current one has fooled Goemkars on deadlines.
“Your pet slogan as the then leader of the Opposition of throwing out casinos out of Goa for good never materialised. Rather, there has been mushrooming of casinos in pan Goa. Besides, the South Goa district hospital whose foundation stone was laid on December 30, 2008 when Congress party was in power in Goa, is still not completed even after ten years and your government has changed many deadlines including the latest two i.e. May of this year (2018) which was later changed to October. But still the completed hospital is not in sight,” he said.
Reginaldo pointed out that CM’s pet slogan of providing zero tolerance to corruption in governance just remains on paper as no action till date whatsoever has been taken against persons holding public offices indulging in corruption connected with illegal mining, against people involved in illegal sale of comunidade land, against kingpins responsible for the sale of formalin-laced fish imports, against drug mafia, against the top echelons of the Goa State Cooperative Bank for indulging in gross financial irregularities, etc.
He reminded the Chief Minister that he and his government have been found wanting even on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet slogans of Swachh Bharat Mission because there is garbage littered across Goa and the worst is that many villages out the total 375 villages of Goa still lack in toilets as a result many people defecate in the open.
“Who can forget that on January 31, 2018 when you had publicly stated that by October 2 of this year Goa will become open defecation-free (ODF) and in this endeavour, your government was constructing 72,000 toilets in different parts of both the districts of the State - North and South. The ODF deadline was missed and it was extended to November 19 of this year which again proved about your government’s complete failure on complying with deadlines. Now your government has shamelessly extended it by one more year to December 19, 2019,” he added.
