PANAJI
Goa Pradesh Congress Committee President Girish Chodankar on Saturday alleged that the Health Minister is in the process of undertaking a well-organised fraud to the tune of Rs 300 crore in Goa Medical College and Hospital, Bambolim and other State-run hospitals by floating a tender for “Facility Management Services” (FMS) at GMC.
“We demand a clarification from Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on this fraud within three days failing which it will be assumed that he has endorsed this loot of public money,” Chodankar charged.
Congress has demanded immediate scrapping of the tendering process and that a new process should be started, abiding by the rules and following all codal formalities.
Chodankar alleged that the tender floated by GMC on January 29, 2020 for FMS has been manipulated to select the contractor favoured by the Health Minister.
Chodankar said that this tender is only for labour supply and that a fresh tender proposes 156 labourers for the said work, which was earlier carried out by 30 labourers.
Apart from this, the contractor has allegedly been given a free hand in purchasing materials and in finalising the annual maintenance of DG sets, transformers, HT and LT breaker and protection system, HVAC (chillers and its system), fire fighting system, split ACs, and window ACs, internet services as well as exterior and interior painting.
“Over the last several years, this work was entrusted to GSIDC Ltd, which was doing this work engaging contractors for mere Rs 2 crore annually. But now the tender is awarded to M/s Ecoclean Systems & Solutions-Panaji Goa, at Rs 11.35 crore. This was the reason that GSIDC was sidelined. The minister can now loot the amount of more than Rs 9 crore,” Chodankar alleged.
According to Chodankar, the information sought under RTI clears that the estimate was not prepared before tendering. In the reply to an RTI query posed by Congress, Dean of Goa Medical College stated that there is a big list of pending works which are not executed by GSIDC Ltd. “This is an inappropriate excuse to justify a tender for only supply of labour at Rs 11.35 crore per year,” Chodankar said expressing fear over the fact that the government has provisioned to extend this contract for 10 years.
