DIRTY WATER: SEWAGE CORP ENDORSES PVT TECHNOLOGY

PANJIM: In what could emerge as Goa’s biggest brazen display of capital cronyism, state-owned Sewage & Infrastructure Development Corporation of Goa Ltd (SIDCGL) has been promoting just one kind of sewerage treatment technology owned by a private company in gross violation of Ministry of Finance prescribed guidelines through its official website.

What is shocking is that one of the projects being executed in the State has been awarded to a company that has the same set of directors for another company handling another C-Tech technology project prescribed by SIDCGL. What is even worse is that Goa’s Sewage Corporation is led by PWD Minister Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavalikar and has fellow Phondekar and BJP State Unit Treasurer Sanjeev Desai as its Vice Chairman.

This is a fairly straight story. Since July 2014, the SIDCGL website has listed C-Tech as the technology for waste water treatment. The Corporation that is handling sewerage systems development works to the tune of crores of rupees has been promoting this technology. This is in direct contravention of Ministry of Finance’s Department of Expenditure’s Rule for Procurement (Rule 144) which states “Fundamental principles of public buying (for all procurements including procurement of works)…The procedure to be followed in making public procurement must conform to the following yardsticks…(b) not indicate a requirement for a particular trademark, trade name or brand”. 

SIDCGL’s use of C-Tech on its website also violates Section 2.1 of Chapter 4 of the same document which states that “Except in case of proprietary purchase from a selected single source, reference to brand names, catalogue numbers or other details that limit any materials or items to specific manufacturer(s) should be provided as far as possible. Where unavoidable, such items descriptions should always be followed by the words “or substantially equivalent”. So what is the catch here?

As we know, all government tenders have to provide a level playing ground. This means that SIDCGL also has to evaluate and offer alternative technologies for different projects for Goa. However, here the government went overboard. 

C-Tech technology is patented and owned by private player SFC Environmental Technologies Private limited. C-Tech is not the name of the technology. The technology is called CYCLIC ACTIVATED SLUDGE TREATMENT process or CASP. C-Tech is the patent that is owned by SFC Environmental Technologies Private Limited. Goa government’s PWD and SIDCGL are promoting not only the patented technology owned by one chosen private 

entity but is actually promoting the entity itself on their home page. A lucid description of the very exclusive SFC Environmental Technologies Private limited is featured on SIDCGL website in a virtual endorsement of the company and its technology.

What PWD and SIDCGL have been doing is that only companies that are willing to buy and execute the patented C-Tech technology from SFC Environmental Technologies Private limited are allowed to construct sewage treatment plants in Goa.

So while the Goa State Industrial Development Corporation built 0.8 MLD Sewage Treatment Plant in Panjim using C-Tech is being constructed by UPL Environmental Engineers Pvt Ltd, the same UPL headed UPL Environmental Infrastructure Group has another company called Gharpure Engineering And Construction Pvt Ltd (Ghapure) building a 1.3 MLD sewage laundry for Goa Medical College.

In Panjim itself SFC Environmental Technologies lists two PWD-built Sewage Treatment Plants using their patented C-Tech technology a 12.5 MLD plant with a peak flow of 28.5 MLD built by HN Engineers Pvt Ltd and a 15 MLD sewage treatment plant with a peak capacity of 37.5 MLD built by an HNB Engineers Pvt Ltd. The names of these two companies are mysteriously similar. Herald shall be taking a hard look at C-Tech and prove how empirical research has proved that not only is C-Tech the most expensive but not the best technology.