Ahmedabad firm to monitor setting up of Sonsodo plant
HERALD REPORTER
MARGAO, NOV 24
It’s official. Chief Minister Digambar Kamat-led high power committee on Sonsodo on Wednesday gave its stamp of approval for the appointment of Ahmedabad-based P U Asnani as the consultant to monitor the setting up of the waste treatment plant at the dumping site.
A meeting of the high-power committee chaired by the Chief Minister evaluated the technical bid submitted by the consultants and found that only the Ahmedabad based consultant qualifies for the coveted job.
Chief Minister, Digambar Kamat later told Herald that Asnani has qualified for the appointment as consultant to monitor work on the setting up of the waste treatment plant at Sonsodo. “When the technical bids were opened, the Committee found that Hyderabad-based Enviro Engineering Ltd could not qualify for the job since the company had participated in the tender to set up the plant. The third consultant also failed to qualify for its failure to submit the documents as per the Request for Proposal”, Kamat said.
Replying to a query, the Chief Minister said the high-power committee would now open the financial bid submitted by P U Asnani which would decide the question of consultancy fees. “Let the financial bid be opened first, which would decide the question of the consultancy fees”, Kamat added.
Incidentally, the Margao Municipal Council had hand picked P U Asnani to evaluate the financial and technical bids of Fomento and Ramky Enviro Engineering Ltd, who later gave his ruling in favour of the Goa based company to set up the waste treatment plant at the dumping site.
Now that the high power Committee has settled in favour of Asnani to monitor the work of the garbage treatment plant, the Ahmedabad-based consultant returns back to the city to monitor the work of the very same company approved by him a couple of months ago.
When Herald contacted Margao Municipal Chief Officer Prasanna Acharya, he tried to keep the deliberations of the high powered committee under wraps saying the minutes of the meeting are not yet ready and finalized.
Interestingly, Acharya presided over the Margao Municipal administration when the Civic body engaged the services of Asnani without inviting Expression of Interest.
