PORVORIM:  Public Work Department (PWD) Minister Ramakrishna (Sudin) Dhavalikar on Thursday announced the concretisation of all roads in the State, while proposing to spend nearly Rs 500 crore on construction, repair and maintenance of roads by the end of the financial year.

“The maintenance of road becomes a problem due to the heavy and incessant rains that State receives. Hence we have decided to concretise all the State roads. For that we need huge funds, for which I will again have to approach the Central Government,” Dhavalikar said after being corned by the opposition on the poor condition of national, state, district and village roads. 

The Minister said the government will spent nearly Rs 500 crore in all constituencies for road related works. The total budget of the PWD is 2262 crore for the current financial year, he added.

Congress MLA Pratapsingh Rane brought to the notice of the House the condition of the roads, which are full of potholes. He asked why the PWD is lacking in maintaining the roads. 

The Minister was also corned by the opposition MLAs for failing to take up development works in their constituencies. Canacona MLA Isidore Fernandes said PWD has not issued a single tender or work order for any kind of works in his constituency in the last nine months. 

“Is PWD working only for certain parts of the State? Is the budget meant to undertake works in certain constituencies and not for entire Goa?” he questioned. 

Replying to this, the Minister said that tenders were held back due to introduction of Goods and Service Tax (GST) in June. “Since June, we have not issued any tender as there was issue with cost of certain items with introduction of GST,” he said. 

“The issue is now being sorted out and the tenders for various works in all 40 constituencies have been issued since last six-seven days,” Dhavalikar said. 

He said that powers are given to respective executive engineers to take up works up to Rs 5 lakh without government approval.