Team Herald
MARGAO: Accusing Town and Country Planning Minister Vijai Sardessai of hoodwinking people, Cuncolim MLA Clafasio Dias has asked the Goa Forward Party leader to solve three major issues plaguing Goans.
The Cuncolim MLA said he had raised two of the above issues before Vijai aligned with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Briefing media persons, he recalled that Vijai had promised that a statue of Dr Jack de Sequeira would be installed in the Assembly complex and had also led an agitation against the Mopa airport and pointed out that at present the minister is silent on these issues.
He asked Vijai to take action against those responsible for supplying fish laced with formalin to Goans due to which many Goans have fallen prey to cancer.
Clafasio condemned the meeting convened by Yuri Alemao with officials in a Margao hotel and demanded to know how officials could attend that meeting when they have been instructed to attend the ones summoned only by MPs or MLAs.
“Yuri is not an elected member and how could the officials attend the meeting, which was held when I was out of station,” he said, asserting that he has raised issues of Cuncolim constituency with the concerned departments and ministers.
“The chief minister’s illness has affected me as I could not take up matters with him,” he said while alleging that Yuri and his father former minister Joaquim Alemao are trying to take credit for the works done by him.
“We had an agitation in Cuncolim over the power issue and the then power minister Pandurang Madkaikar had promised to change the conductors and old transformers,” he said, adding that he will pursue the matter with the new power minister.
He accused the Goa Forward Party of deliberately holding back his works and accused the Water Resources Department of failing to take up any of the various works he had recommended probably because Durgadas Kamat was the minister’s officer on special duty.
“He was probably removed as OSD because of his tendency to keep works pending,” said Clafasio while questioning the logic of the government officials, who attended the meeting called by Yuri and Durgadas in a hotel.
Cuncolim Congress Block president Landry Mascarenhas said the power problem in Cuncolim was due to conductors and transformers that are 40 years old and wondered why Joaquim Alemao did not replace them when he was the MLA for 10 years.
Cuncolim Mahila Congress president Georgina Gama said they had confidence in their MLA to do their works and did not need somebody, who is not even from the Cuncolim constituency to address their problems.
Congress South Goa District Committee vice president Deepak Kharangate said government officials will have to go for every meeting called by a panchayat member or councillor if they can attend a meeting like the one held by Yuri and accused the government of playing with people’s lives by providing them fish laced with formalin.
