PANAJI
With over Rs 117 crore funds available for spending towards welfare of mining affected people, the Governing Council of the South Goa District Mineral Fund (SGDMF) has directed all the departmental heads to mobilize proposals in unrepresented sectors like energy and irrigation.
During its recent meeting, the Governing Council was also critical of the long inordinate delay in execution of the sanctioned project by various departments as the files are moved to the government for further approval. The Council maintained that their approval should be considered as final in implementing the approved projects.
The SGDMF has Rs 117.02 cr funds available in its kitty, while projects worth over Rs 56.57 crore being sanctioned so far. Of this, Rs 21.31 crores have been disbursed to various agencies.
“The GC was of the opinion that the departments or Project Monitoring Units should mobilize proposals in the unrepresented sectors such as physical infrastructure, irrigation and Energy and watershed development and newly introduced sectors of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Housing,” stated the minutes of the meeting.
As on date, a whopping Rs 8.05 crore have remained unutilized under irrigation sector and another Rs 9.20 crore under energy and watershed development, with not a single project being proposed so far. There are also another Rs 6.90 crore available for agriculture, Rs 5.80 crore available for physical infrastructure and another Rs 5.61 cr under animal husbandry sector.
An amount of Rs 3.45 crore have also remained unutilized under Housing.
The meeting also took serious note of long inordinate delay in execution of the sanctioned project and decided to design a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for speedy completion of the projects.
“The GC members were critical of the long inordinate delay in execution of the sanctioned project by different line department dur to the file being moved to the government,” the minutes stated.
It said that SGDMF being a Trust and the financing body, the sanction or approval of GC should be taken as final approval by the respective department to execute the project,” it said further.
