Herald has once again unearthed the seedy underbelly of this government’s functioning where institutions and procedures are boycotted and bypassed with utter disdain to award contracts and projects, blessed by ministers and even the Chief Minister.
As we have exposed in this edition of your newspaper, a consortium of international consultants were appointed to prepare Goa’s Tourism Master Plan and Tourism Policy and Programme Management Assistance, for five years in June 2015, without the finance department’s consent. In fact this was done inspite of the Finance department’s rejection for seven times.
The financial implications to the state are not minor. The contract itself, awarded to KPMG Advisory services Pvt Ltd is valued at Rs 4.99 crores. Simultaneously a monthly payment of Rs 8 lakhs a month stretching to five years will be paid, which amounts to Rs 4.80 crores. Thus a little under Rs 10 crores of public money has been signed away, without the finance departments approval. And shockingly, the cabinet met in December to “regularise the contract” signed in June. And all this while this utterly irregular process, defying all standards of vigilance and anti graft measures, was going on , KPMG continued its work for which they will be paid for without validation from finance.
The sequence of events throw light on the manner, quality and seriousness of work undertaken too. In under eight weeks since the contract was signed, (and one would presume KMPG took a couple of weeks to start work), it submitted its first report : “Current projected tourism scenario in Goa and understanding key gaps”, on August 17.08.2015. This exercise was done in just about six weeks. Is it plausible such an extensive and important module would have been prepared in just six weeks, given the amount of research, legwork and stakeholder consultation that is needed?
A month after the first module was submitted, the file was once again before the finance department which was clearly frustrated with the farce and said in so many words, that since the government had already given approval bypassing the finance department, the matter might as well be cleared by the cabinet.
Finance minister & Chief Minister Parsekar has a lot of explaining to do. The Finance Minister in him has not approved this wasteful expenditure but the Chief Minister in him, along with the Honourable Tourism Minister, got the cabinet to regularise the appointment of KPMG as the consultants for the tourism Master Plan and policy in December.
Goa needs to know how many consultancies awarded by this government are to the tune of Rs 10 crores. Goa also needs to know why Rs 10 crores are need to be paid for preparing a Tourism Master Plan and policy. There needs to be a full public disclosure of the selection process, which the department in its note called “elaborate and transparent”. Herald demands that this elaborate and transparent procedure, which is making the people of Goa pay Rs 10 crores for a master plan and policy for tourism, be made public.
In any case the refusal of the finance department to clear this is a clear indication that the process may not have been transparent or elaborate. For the cabinet to ride on the frustrated final opinion of the Finance department, which put its hand up and asked the cabinet to take the call, is shameful.
At every step, the selection hasn’t followed a laid down process, even if one argues that the best consultant in the world has been selected. And when it comes to a payout of close to Rs 10 crores without the approval of the finance department, it reeks of fraud and corruption. Clearly, this master strategy was well in place even though master plan for tourism still isn’t.
