I have been reading Herald regularly and suddenly I became curious on reading matters related to JICA. I usually don’t read much the matters related to scams, bribes, corruption, kickbacks and all that stuff as these things do not make much sense to me and in fact, I don’t understand them. First, I thought JICA was a News Agency or TH or HB and thought someone by name Jose Inacio Caetano Abreu, reporting from Team Herald. And only when I saw two ex Chief Ministers’ names repeated almost everyday, I took keen interest in knowing what exactly JICA was and its objectives.
Japan International Co-operation Agency, according to news reports had approved a “loan” of Rs 900-1400 crore to Indian Government, payable after 2017 over a period of 20 years, to execute a “Dream Project” concerning water supply and sewerage facilities.
The main objectives of this Project was to provide safe and stable water supply and sewerage services that would meet the rapidly increasing water demand by expanding and rehabilitating water supply facilities in the existing Selaulim Water Supply Scheme and by constructing and expanding sewerage facilities in Margao, Mapusa and Northern Coastal Belt thereby contributing to improvement of the living conditions of the residents. In fact, this was the part of the 10th 5 Year Plan (April 2002 – March 2007) by the Govt. of India.
The other important issues the Project aimed to be a model for realizing the goal of providing 24 x 7 days water supply services, for the first time in India, besides to carry out capacity building of PWD, the organization in charge of operation and maintenance, including leakage detection, financial management etc.
Whatever might have happened as far as bribes are concerned but the credit will go to the Chief Minister Parsekar as he took a bold step in handing over the case to the Crime Branch, which is his baby and not the CBI. Parrikar must be regretting for having missed this feather in his cap for not tackling this case although he was aware of the so-called bribe issue as admitted by him saying the money must have gone into “football”. Thank God, Dayanand Narvenkar is not involved in this or else he would have said the money must have gone into the “cricket” ball.
Parsekar can perform even better if he puts his mind and soul in wiping out Goa’s debt of Rs 10,000 or more crore, completely. How? Auction all what A. Wachasundar has accumulated over the years including his Jaguar & Cheetah and a piece of Dharbandora. And if that is not enough, recover at least Rs 5000 crore from mining loot estimated to Rs 35,000 crore as per Shah Commission Report and balance leave it to the next CM to recover. If you do this, you will be the nCM for next 10 years, irrespective of what your competitors think of you.
All said and done it is sad for the Louis Berger for suffering a loss of millions of Dollars not only in bribes but also in huge fine levied by the US Court. Admit you are the losers and the ones who made it, are the real winners.
By the way the money is neither in the football nor in a cricket ball, it may be out of reach of us all. We are still awaiting PM’s huge Swiss Bank’s haul. For the time being: “The Winners Take It All”.
