While Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar followed his PWDminister Sudhin Dhavlikar’s assessment that there is widespread corruption inthe PWD which needs an anti-corruption probe, The Goan presents yet more evidenceof large scale irregularities in the tender allotment in the every divisionwhere Parrikar said a probe would take place. This follows your newspaper’spersistent investigations in major divisions of the PWD with documentaryevidence that has caused the ex PWD minister to directly attack The Goan fortargeting him. All we are doing is presenting facts, not just to fellow Goansbut to the present government to act.
In this lot of documents (we have a list of every work orderissued in Majorda, Fatorda and Navelim since 2008), we merely offer a snapshot,of how blatantly money has been overspent.
During the election year 2011-12, in 76 out 107 non planned works,the quoted amounts approved by the PWD is more than he estimated costs. Evenmore shockingly, the actual amount paid in 16 cases is more than the quotedamount.
These inflations range from around 30,000 to a couple of lakhsin most cases.
Take every one of the 30,000 case, multiply it with 13constituencies in Division 6 and further multiply it with 25 divisions (with adownward revision, since all divisions don’t have the same number ofconstituencies).
The brazenness makes you numb. There are instances whenprojects have been given to one contractor without a single other competitivebid. For example two projects were given to Francis Fernandes on twoconsecutive days May 9, 2011, both starting and ending on the same day (May 24to September 21, 2011). Fernandes quoted 9.93 lakhs for the first project and hasbeen paid Rs 10.42 lakhs. He quoted 9.83 lakhs for the second and has been paid10.29 lakhs.
In contrast, Vishwas Harmalkar, another PWD contractorcommitted suicide after continuous harassment from the department that refusedto clear his bills after the first installment, which was cleared before theproject started, for obvious reasons. Overpayment to contractors was a legacyof the Churchill regime. In 2010-2011, out of 81 non planned works, in 43 cases(more than fifty percent) the amount paid to contractors was even more than whatthey themselves quoted.
Churchill Alemao has steadfastly avoided answering directquestions on any of these instances preferring to play victim. When The Goancontacted him, as it always does, he snapped ‘I have said all in my earlierpress conference (which was dedicated to alleging that The Goan was targetinghim) and then he asked, in English “Why are you fuelling the fire?”
We presume he meant that we were continuing to investigate hiserstwhile department.
Further, we give you the details of many of the pointsraised above. It’s doesn’t take crack investigators to get to the truth here.Just people with honest intentions who see the truth in PWD’s own records that TheGoan has unearthed.
