PORVORIM: The Minister for Public Works Department (PWD) Ramakrishna Dhavalikar on Tuesday found himself at the back foot after opposition cornered him over non release of payments to the contractors amounting to crores of rupees. The opposition benches grilled the Minister for restricting the non-plan works to Rs two crores for each constituency in a bid to curtail unwanted expenditures.
After initially defending his department, Dhavalikar assured the State Legislative Assembly that bills amounting to Rs 200 crores would be cleared before Ganesh Chaturthi.
The Question Hour on Tuesday morning witnessed uproar after Independent MLA Vijai Sardesai informed the House that Goan contractors are left without payment by PWD for months. He also pointed out that the department via a circular in 2012 has directed its divisions to curtail the non-plan works with upper limit of Rs 2 crores per constituencies.
“The contractors are not released their payments and hence they are reluctant to take up more government works. Bills worth crores of rupees are not released for months. There is complete injustice on Goan contractors,” Sardesai said, who was rightly supported by former Chief Minister and Congress MLA Digambar Kamat and Independent MLA Rohan Khaunte.
“Since government is not able to pay the contractors on time, they are not coming forward to take up more works. Hence works are getting delayed,” Kamat said.
“This is the reason why PWD has not been able to float any new tender in last six months,” Khaunte claimed.
Replying to the same, Minister assured to clear the bills of Rs 200 crores to the contractors before Ganesh festival, which is scheduled in the first week of September.
Earlier, Sardesai questioned the reason behind curtailing the non-plan expenditure and demanded that the upper limit be increased to Rs four crore for each constituency. “Non plan works cannot be restricted to Rs two crores and now this year being the election year, there are hundreds of works that needs to be done,” he claimed.
Responding to the query, Dhavalikar said that the non-plan expenditure was curtailed following directions from the Chief Minister, who wanted to avoid unwanted expenditure.
