PANAJI
It cost then PWD minister Deepak Prabhu Pauskar his BJP ticket and embarrassed the BJP that Chief Minister Pramod Sawant ordered a ‘high level’ inquiry.
Yet barely months after the scandal broke, everyone seems to have forgotten it -- including the very department tasked with conducting the inquiry.
In a reply to an RTI query seeking the status of the inquiry ordered by the Chief Minister into the alleged PWD recruitment scam, Deputy Director of Vigilance Maya Pednekar informed the applicant that the “requisite information sought by you is not available” hence the request could not be processed.
An RTI application filed before the office of the Chief Secretary Puneet Kumar Goel, who, incidentally, Pramod Sawant said would be heading the inquiry into the PWD recruitment scam had sought details of the status of the inquiry ordered by the Chief Minister into the alleged Public Works Department.
No sooner the scam broke, with Panaji MLA Atanasio Monserrate accusing then PWD Minister Deepak Pauskar of selling jobs to certain preferred persons, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant announced that there would be a high-level inquiry into the allegations.
According to the Chief Minister, the inquiry was to be conducted by a three-member committee consisting of Chief Secretary Puneet Kumar Goel, Special Secretary (Vigilance) Ankita Anand and Director of Vigilance Sanjeev Gauns Desai.
All the recruitments done during the tenure of previous minister Deepak Prabhu Pauskar were to be kept on hold until the inquiry was completed. Goel was the finance secretary at the time the inquiry was ordered and has since taken charge of the post of Chief Secretary.
Monserrate had alleged that there was a scam of Rs 70 crore in the recruitment of PWD engineers, a process that picked up pace prior to the assembly polls.
The PWD department had advertised the filling up of more than 350 junior engineer and technical assistant posts in the department of public works.
Surprisingly neither the office of the chief secretary, the PWD department or the vigilance department seem to have any inkling of the inquiry.
The Chief Secretary’s office upon receiving the request forwarded it to the Public Works Department. The PWD department after internally circulating the RTI request sent it to the vigilance department which reported back that information concerning the status of the inquiry nor any report by the committee is available.
Opposition parties had raked up the issue prior to the elections with the Congress, the Goa Forward and other parties demanding that the recruitments be probed by the Central Bureau of Investigations.
