With the roads across Goa in a perilous state with potholes galore, it was in poor taste that PWD Minister Nilesh Cabral chose to celebrate his birthday. It should have been a day when Cabral should have pondered and reflected on how the PWD is now actually a 'Public Waste Department' and a 'Personal Wealth Department'. Faced with pathetic roads all over, a cosmetic exercise of suspending a few contractors is no solution. The whole system of executing public works including the roads needs to be revamped with the thrust being on strict scrutiny from tender to execution. Regular audits with full transparency and accountability independent of ministerial interference must be mandatory.
Will the government please explain as to why no deterrent action has been taken against MVR Infra Projects Pvt Ltd whose shabby and substandard public works are on display across Goa for the last many years? It is no secret that contractors in several ways fund the birthday celebrations of ministers as an investment where the product is the execution of sub-standard works at a great loss to the Exchequer, not to the minister.
