Panjim: Over a 100 engineers, supposedly addressed a “press conference”, which was more of a forced public meeting to vent the frustration of Power Minister Milind Naik over two continuous reports of Herald.
Herald exposed how the Power Minister Naik, had literally seized the file on which the Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar cleared the appointments of five executive engineers selected by the Goa Public Service Commission and blocked the appointments on the pretext that other assistant engineers (of the Graduate Engineers Association) would be deprived of promotions if these office EE’s were appointed. In the second story Herald exposed how the Power Minister has not cleared urgent applications of 33 corporates for sanction of power, for no apparent reason, though the applicants and those of the power department know why the files weren’t moving.
According to reliable sources in the state secretariat, the power minister, it is learnt, summoned the two members of the Graduate Engineers Association and asked the members of the association to either go to the Herald office in hordes or convene a press conference to condemn the report. The next day (Thursday) the Graduate Engineers held a press conference at TB Cunha hall and condemned the Herald report and praised the Power Minister to the hilt.
It was obvious that this was part of a script, since the Chief Minister himself stated that he would need to clear the appointments blocked by Milind Naik, himself (see story above).
Most Executive Engineers, Assistant Engineers and Junior Engineers gathered, however did not even know what the issue was.
When the question-answer session started this reporter was not even allowed to ask questions with some engineers trying to abuse from outside.
When Herald asked them if they were directed to convene the press conference by the Power Minister they mumbled a weak denial and looked at each other.
Quite clearly their attempt to browbeat and intimidate didn’t work and this brazen attempt to intimidate Herald turned out to be a dampener.
