The Ghost Who Walks
The contract for the colossal new Collectorate building being built at Margao was tendered in December 2007 at a cost of Rs 73,46,34,449. It won’t be ready in June 2010 as scheduled but in December and the cost has already escalated to Rs 77.50 cr which was expected. In fact, already the next projected cost is Rs 93 cr. It will soar (to Rs 100 cr perhaps?) and will go down as the most expensive ever built in Goa. And for what realistic purpose was it built? So that some government babu can harass you even more as you blunder from one floor to another looking for the chap who just stepped out for his umpteenth cup of chai? The government won’t give a Panchayat the talathi it deserves but it will blow Rs 100 cr on a new Collectorate building. A case in point is the Cansaulim-Arossim-Cuelim Village Panchayat’s talathi who also holds charge of the Velsao-Pale-Issorcim VP which means he comes to work only Mondays and Thursdays at Velsao. Because the Boss Man, the Mamlatdar of Mormugo, wants him there at Vasco da Gama, his base station, every now and then, the poor chap has become like The Phantom -The Ghost Who Walks; for no fault of his. In this case the government gets really mean. To make you go through the pain of a FI&IXV, it divided the three villages of Velsao VP between two Mamlatdars. Yes, there is a Mamlatdar and two joint Mamlatdars. Machiavellian? I thought so too.
Consultancy, the money spinner
1) The cost of civil works including plumbing, fire fighting and internal electrical works (at the Rs 93 cr level) is an estimated Rs 73,46,34,449 and the consultancy fee (i.e architectural and project management consultancy) is Rs 4,02,57,968.
2) The external electrical work will cost Rs 2,11,49,474 and the consultancy fee is Rs 11,58,991.
3) The cost of the internal, external and special lighting fixtures is Rs 74,40,000 and strange but true, the consultancy fee is Rs 4,07,712. In other words the consultancy fee for items 2& 3, both electrical jobs, itself works out to Rs 15,66,703 plus there already is an unknown consultancy fee for internal electrical works factored into item 1 (see above).
4) The elevator work will cost Rs 2,77,00,000 and the consultancy fee is Rs 15,17,960.
5) Air-conditioning the complex will cost Rs 1,93,02,803 and the consultancy fee is Rs 10,57,794.
6) The cost of the telephone exchange and UPS will be Rs 1,33,40,845 and believe it or not the consultancy fee is Rs 7,31,078.
7) The audio visual equipments for the conference room and AV room will cost Rs 44,00,000 and the consultancy fee for this is Rs 2,41,120.
8) The furniture will cost Rs 5,23,29,550 and lo and behold the consultancy fee for this is Rs 28,67,659.
9) There is a miscellaneous cost of Rs 2,32,000 and mercifully they didn’t need a consultant to tell them that. The magic figure at this moment is Rs 92,87,69,403 and the dice is still being rolled.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
You have by now begun to understand the current Cabinet’s compulsive obsession for big buildings and decided to live with it. That much is clear. But it boggles the mind when in a total cost of Rs 88,05,29,121 the consultancy fee works out Rs 4,82,40,282 and is growing. Now figure out the maintenance and other support costs of this monolith and notch that up as one more record that will be set by Goa’s most expensive building yet. And in your village meanwhile the streetlights don’t work, the narrow village roads are potholed, you are forced to buy your own expensive UPS because the power supply is as inconsistent as the figures above. Worse, you won’t be invited to the gala opening of the Collectorate knowing well that will also cost you a small fortune. And in villages a few people continue to clean up the beaches which hordes of domestic tourists dirty for the good of the tourism industry. And yet on September 21, Chief Minister Digambar Kamat flew all the way to Delhi with a delegation to convince the Information & Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni not to pull the rug from under the Entertainment Society of Goa. Her ministry wants to reduce the Entertainment Society of Goa’s role in hosting this year’s International Film Festival of India for all the right reasons. But the Goa government can’t have that, can it, considering its other obsession is IFFI; and all the tax-free perks of a good life that go with organizing it? Proof of its fascination is in the very timing of his visit, made when Delhi was in a flap over Jammu & Kashmir under its worse siege ever and the Commonwealth Games about to go kaput. Life goes on.
Battle of the Bulge
The Navy’s growing a belly. You wouldn’t expect the Navy to get the acquisition bug too. A long time ago, the Navy locked down the old road to popular Bogmolo beach. It really hurt because you could cycle down to Bogmolo from Vasco da Gama. It was all done for a sacred cause, blah, blah. All the while, the Navy only employed more men and lost more aircraft, nothing else. The Navy is now going to acquire over 30 lakh sq mt including the traditional Bhimvel beach. The excuse this time is the fear terrorists might strike at aircraft from the islands which are to be acquired. Why not patrol the St. George islands from the seaside and maintain a land-based force equipped with night vision and whatever it takes? That would make everyone happy. I could point out a few thousand shanty homes in Zuarinagar where terrorists could launch shoulder- fired missiles, a high-rise hotel in Bogmolo with a gallery view of flying aircraft plus 5-star comfort, and a few hundred safe havens in Vasco da Gama to set up base. Why use the difficult island option when you can do your dirty work from the safety of land? In fact Vascoites have expressed fears that if the fuel storage tanks in the town containing millions of litres of fuel are blown up, there would be no Vasco and no Mormugao Port, and no Goa Shipyard which ironically builds only naval ships. But who cares?
(feedback lionroars.goa@gmail.com, 9822152164
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Only in Goa
Miss Moneypenny flows
It rained this year more than even Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, could have predicted even if he could be accused of shooting off yet another set of rigged up figures on climate change. In case, you’ve missed this – even global warming has had its unfair share of contradictions, around the world. But then if you are Indian today and doing well in A-broad, and it so happened that you were Rajendra Pachauri, the UN’s bureaucrat with a bee in his bonnet, you can be accused of anything especially if the accuser is a Brit leading newspaper and is called the ‘The Telegraph’. What you don’t know is that it rained in somebody else’s pocket (or many pockets for that matter) like rain water gushing through storm water drains. You could say, the rainfall was straight from the Mint for those with pockets like funnels, wide and channeled directly into some bank account. Either that or the mountains of mining rejects are getting the better of all the government’s feeble attempts to keep Bicholim from going under. My point being, then why waste money if the problem cannot be solved. It happened in Bicholim where Rs 8.84 crores was spent to desilt the Bicholim river which again this year took its wrath out on the residents of Bicholim town especially the Bandirwada and Gaonkarwada areas. Undertaken by the Water Resources Department, the flood control project was supposed to have been accomplished in three ways. 1. Improvement of waterway to Bicholim river from Kudchire to L.I.S Scheme, Vathadev –tendered to Pan Constructions. 2. Improvement to waterways from L.I.S Scheme to Dhabdhaba – tendered to Noorudheen Construction Pvt. Ltd. 3. Improvement of waterways from Dhabdhaba to Bagwada Pilgao – tendered to Apollo Engineers & Contractors Pvt. Ltd.
Diamonds Are Forever
Is a group of retired government babus trying to emulate Sachin Tendulkar who is never going to retire since he can pick and choose where to play? Or is it that a cabinet-full of selectors just want them to bat on, and on. The Chief Minister Digambar Kamat hired RA Verlekar as his officer on special duty. His age as you read this is 67 years and eleven months to be precise. His under secretary, Amrut Gaonkar is 64 years and ten months. He hired Jagdish Kalangutkar as section officer. His age as you read this is 60 years and four months, but that could be considered younger. Eight of his ministers all have OSD’s (doesn’t that sound like some kind of James Bond adaptation) over the age of sixty years. Licence to Kill or not, Joaquim Alemao’s Man Friday is 68 years and two months old. More power to their guns, but what I don’t understand is the government continuing to pay them a hefty pension because pension deductions are being made from their monthly salaries. BTW, Mickey Pacheco and his Man Friday split after many years of Bonding together. Turned out as Mickey says that while he was manning the cash counters, his Man Friday was on special duty secret assignments of the asset accumulation kind. There is a guestimated Rs 3-5 crore missing from the cash till and none of that I am told went overseas if you get my drift. It’s all here, in Goa, in hard real estate. What was that you said about two sides of the same coin?
Dr. No(Goan)
No silly, this has nothing to do with the Commissioner for NRI Affairs Eduardo Faleiro’s, project (the third edition) of bringing well-heeled Goans settled abroad on a holiday to Goa this November-December. This is about non-Goans employed as doctors in the Goa Medical College (GMC). Call it a limited edition. You thought doctors (lawyers too) was about the only career Goans choose and become. You were right. So, explain this then. How the GMC employed 66 non-Goan doctors till July 2010 and counting. In 2008 it hired 14 doctors. In the two months May-June, 2009 GMC hired 19 (of the 66) doctors and two more in December 2009. In 2010 five doctors were hired. The Goa Dental College & Hospital has 13 non-Goan doctors on its rolls. So, now we don’t have dentists too. You wish those Goan Diaspora holidaying here will get their teeth into this? I do too. The Goa College of Pharmacy has two. They were hired in 2009 and 2010 as lecturers. The Institute of Psychiatry & Human Behaviour rehired two clinical pathologists after they retired in 2005.
For Your Eyes Only
The Goa Barge Owners Association (GBOA) president Atul Jadav is going around telling any newspaper that listens that Goa is in dire need of a maritime industrial estate. Inevitably, the case of the Dubai Maritime City was cited as evidence without the corollary of course, that abroad there is definite transparency and definitive law. It pissed off the Environment Minister Aleixo Sequeira who called up Jadav. Thing is GBOA wants the government to acquire five lakh sq mts at Bhoma near the Cumbarjua canal. Blunder 1. He was cocksure that the new environment would be protected but agreed the present repair yards are polluting. Blunder 2. Is there a plan here because we have elected MLAs (four) who are barge owners among other business interests they have. Barge owners have themselves told me in the past that the playing field is getting crowded by the entry of outsiders with black money to burn. The barge business gives a huge opportunity. They complain about the China market cooling down. When business has been bad they simply took their barges to ports in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and even faraway Andhra Pradesh. In fact the barge business has evolved over decades from WWII Land Craft Vessels converted into barges to jumboization of barges in the 80’s, cutting them into halves and extending their size. To the huge 2,000-3,000 tonners of now. But the sheen is wearing off. There aren’t any big fleet owners to buy the 100 size 4,000 sq. mt plots envisaged in the maritime industrial estate.
(feedback lionroars.goa@gmail.com, 9822152164)
It rained this year more than even Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, could have predicted even if he could be accused of shooting off yet another set of rigged up figures on climate change. In case, you’ve missed this – even global warming has had its unfair share of contradictions, around the world. But then if you are Indian today and doing well in A-broad, and it so happened that you were Rajendra Pachauri, the UN’s bureaucrat with a bee in his bonnet, you can be accused of anything especially if the accuser is a Brit leading newspaper and is called the ‘The Telegraph’. What you don’t know is that it rained in somebody else’s pocket (or many pockets for that matter) like rain water gushing through storm water drains. You could say, the rainfall was straight from the Mint for those with pockets like funnels, wide and channeled directly into some bank account. Either that or the mountains of mining rejects are getting the better of all the government’s feeble attempts to keep Bicholim from going under. My point being, then why waste money if the problem cannot be solved. It happened in Bicholim where Rs 8.84 crores was spent to desilt the Bicholim river which again this year took its wrath out on the residents of Bicholim town especially the Bandirwada and Gaonkarwada areas. Undertaken by the Water Resources Department, the flood control project was supposed to have been accomplished in three ways. 1. Improvement of waterway to Bicholim river from Kudchire to L.I.S Scheme, Vathadev –tendered to Pan Constructions. 2. Improvement to waterways from L.I.S Scheme to Dhabdhaba – tendered to Noorudheen Construction Pvt. Ltd. 3. Improvement of waterways from Dhabdhaba to Bagwada Pilgao – tendered to Apollo Engineers & Contractors Pvt. Ltd.
Diamonds Are Forever
Is a group of retired government babus trying to emulate Sachin Tendulkar who is never going to retire since he can pick and choose where to play? Or is it that a cabinet-full of selectors just want them to bat on, and on. The Chief Minister Digambar Kamat hired RA Verlekar as his officer on special duty. His age as you read this is 67 years and eleven months to be precise. His under secretary, Amrut Gaonkar is 64 years and ten months. He hired Jagdish Kalangutkar as section officer. His age as you read this is 60 years and four months, but that could be considered younger. Eight of his ministers all have OSD’s (doesn’t that sound like some kind of James Bond adaptation) over the age of sixty years. Licence to Kill or not, Joaquim Alemao’s Man Friday is 68 years and two months old. More power to their guns, but what I don’t understand is the government continuing to pay them a hefty pension because pension deductions are being made from their monthly salaries. BTW, Mickey Pacheco and his Man Friday split after many years of Bonding together. Turned out as Mickey says that while he was manning the cash counters, his Man Friday was on special duty secret assignments of the asset accumulation kind. There is a guestimated Rs 3-5 crore missing from the cash till and none of that I am told went overseas if you get my drift. It’s all here, in Goa, in hard real estate. What was that you said about two sides of the same coin?
Dr. No(Goan)
No silly, this has nothing to do with the Commissioner for NRI Affairs Eduardo Faleiro’s, project (the third edition) of bringing well-heeled Goans settled abroad on a holiday to Goa this November-December. This is about non-Goans employed as doctors in the Goa Medical College (GMC). Call it a limited edition. You thought doctors (lawyers too) was about the only career Goans choose and become. You were right. So, explain this then. How the GMC employed 66 non-Goan doctors till July 2010 and counting. In 2008 it hired 14 doctors. In the two months May-June, 2009 GMC hired 19 (of the 66) doctors and two more in December 2009. In 2010 five doctors were hired. The Goa Dental College & Hospital has 13 non-Goan doctors on its rolls. So, now we don’t have dentists too. You wish those Goan Diaspora holidaying here will get their teeth into this? I do too. The Goa College of Pharmacy has two. They were hired in 2009 and 2010 as lecturers. The Institute of Psychiatry & Human Behaviour rehired two clinical pathologists after they retired in 2005.
For Your Eyes Only
The Goa Barge Owners Association (GBOA) president Atul Jadav is going around telling any newspaper that listens that Goa is in dire need of a maritime industrial estate. Inevitably, the case of the Dubai Maritime City was cited as evidence without the corollary of course, that abroad there is definite transparency and definitive law. It pissed off the Environment Minister Aleixo Sequeira who called up Jadav. Thing is GBOA wants the government to acquire five lakh sq mts at Bhoma near the Cumbarjua canal. Blunder 1. He was cocksure that the new environment would be protected but agreed the present repair yards are polluting. Blunder 2. Is there a plan here because we have elected MLAs (four) who are barge owners among other business interests they have. Barge owners have themselves told me in the past that the playing field is getting crowded by the entry of outsiders with black money to burn. The barge business gives a huge opportunity. They complain about the China market cooling down. When business has been bad they simply took their barges to ports in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and even faraway Andhra Pradesh. In fact the barge business has evolved over decades from WWII Land Craft Vessels converted into barges to jumboization of barges in the 80’s, cutting them into halves and extending their size. To the huge 2,000-3,000 tonners of now. But the sheen is wearing off. There aren’t any big fleet owners to buy the 100 size 4,000 sq. mt plots envisaged in the maritime industrial estate.
(feedback lionroars.goa@gmail.com, 9822152164)
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Goascam
Marketing of a scam
This is how it’s done in scamgoa.com. First get the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation (GSIDC) to build something as big as is possible, like the Corporation of the City of Panjim (CCP) market. For a size guestimate, look at the Ravindra Bhavan being built on the Verna-Dabolim bypass which you might have easily, as you passed by, thought was an indoor stadium. It’s so large, it literally breaks the skyline as you drive by. The GSIDC comes under the Minister for Urban Development Joaquim Alemao, so nothing goes suburban, if you get my drift. Everything stays in-house and nobody knows nothing, though we’ll get to that one day. When that happens, put it down as the mother of all scams.
For now we are concerned with scam No. 1 which began when the CCP’s councilors began to take “operational control” of the market complex. Now if you want a career as a thieving scoundrel then take note of the words ‘operational control’ because my friend, it will help you one day. Although I think quite a few Goan families practice it to the hilt. And just in case you pretend not to know, I am talking about yes, division of family property. Point is, it appears till date that no official allotment of the hundreds of shops and stalls was done from the first phase in 2003 till now. It’s possible that some councilors succeeded in ‘allotting’ some shops either to themselves or to their relatives. For the record, 37 shops with double height were built in phase I on the ground floor. Seventy-seven shops with single height were built on the ground floor in phase II, 446 platform spaces were built on the ground floor and 344 stalls built on the first floor. They are all occupied, yet no official allotment has been made! The scam is being investigated since July 2010 and the results if properly investigated by the CCP Commissioner should make Fox Crime (the channel) look amateur. Problem is, so far the CCP has come out with two reports, dated March 3 and July 9, 2010.
Mayoral Pleasure
Between July-August 2003, 52 ‘persons’ are said to have illegally occupied shops when Sanjit Rodrigues was the Commissioner and Ashok Naik the Mayor (May 4, 2003-July 17, 2004). They simply walked in and took over 37 shops of double height each with a carpet area of 18 sq.mt, and 15 other smaller-sized shops. Nobody knows how, but it happened despite GSIDC having a detailed official record of the occupants prior to the demolition (of the old market) matched with the shops/stalls they were to be allotted. The CCP has no record either of rents fixed or collected. It happens in Goa and happened again after phase II was completed and inaugurated in January 2007. This time around (between June 20, 2006-January 21, 2007) when Daulat Hawaldar was the Commissioner and Tony Rodrigues the Mayor, 62 shops were occupied. The CCP called it “occupational control”. A further 446 platform spaces were occupied by what the CCP described in its report as “different types of vendors.” The second CCP report said “the official roll was missing and the Mayor and a few councilors monitored shifting of the vendors and allotment of spaces.” It added: “Again, no record is available on the shifting of these vendors in the 2nd phase”. Now, try doing this anywhere in Goa, unless of course you are a migrant especially in Sancoale or chimbel, and believe me you will get your butt hauled to court.
Vendor’s rock
While India’s elite walk miles to get rid of their bulbous bellies, the poor walk miles just to get food. And so it is. At Panjim’s market, vendors’ rock and roll as happened again in January 2008, this time when Sanjiv Gadkar was the Commissioner or should I say Commissar and Tony Rodrigues continued to be the Mayor. This time, 344 stalls were ‘occupied’ and the report said, “this occupation took place, sans administrative intervention, directly under the supervision of the Mayor and some councilors”. Seriously, now at least do you see what I meant by ‘occupational control’. I was only trying to help. The report added: “In the light of what is stated, it will be improper for the present Commissioner (Elvis Gomes) to go into the roles of the above named, and if desired, the government may initiate a proper inquiry to be conducted by an independent authority to go into the entire issue”. A classic example of obfuscation made only in Goa and is tax free.
So, the next time you shop at the market, bargain like hell. Remember, the man/woman conning you has not paid rent, does not have a lease agreement and is using hardware (to make money) paid for by you. OK, so you need a booster shot? It could even ban you from the Commonwealth Games, if it takes place that is, and if you are suddenly accosted with a drug test. This is it. Huge bills amounting to Rs 12,06,952 and Rs 62,20,833 towards unpaid water and electricity consumption have piled up and continue climbing up as are the prices of the vegetables you are buying. Ditto for maintenance and repair costs. In fact bargain real hard on tomatoes especially, they contain the maximium (and cheapest in the market) antioxidants (glutathione) you need to clean up your insides from the heartburn of being a tax payer in Goa. There’s tea of course, but use that to calm your nerves. But again, you are Goan, nothing will have an effect on you. What a life!
(feedback lionroars.goa@gmail.com, 9822152164)
This is how it’s done in scamgoa.com. First get the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation (GSIDC) to build something as big as is possible, like the Corporation of the City of Panjim (CCP) market. For a size guestimate, look at the Ravindra Bhavan being built on the Verna-Dabolim bypass which you might have easily, as you passed by, thought was an indoor stadium. It’s so large, it literally breaks the skyline as you drive by. The GSIDC comes under the Minister for Urban Development Joaquim Alemao, so nothing goes suburban, if you get my drift. Everything stays in-house and nobody knows nothing, though we’ll get to that one day. When that happens, put it down as the mother of all scams.
For now we are concerned with scam No. 1 which began when the CCP’s councilors began to take “operational control” of the market complex. Now if you want a career as a thieving scoundrel then take note of the words ‘operational control’ because my friend, it will help you one day. Although I think quite a few Goan families practice it to the hilt. And just in case you pretend not to know, I am talking about yes, division of family property. Point is, it appears till date that no official allotment of the hundreds of shops and stalls was done from the first phase in 2003 till now. It’s possible that some councilors succeeded in ‘allotting’ some shops either to themselves or to their relatives. For the record, 37 shops with double height were built in phase I on the ground floor. Seventy-seven shops with single height were built on the ground floor in phase II, 446 platform spaces were built on the ground floor and 344 stalls built on the first floor. They are all occupied, yet no official allotment has been made! The scam is being investigated since July 2010 and the results if properly investigated by the CCP Commissioner should make Fox Crime (the channel) look amateur. Problem is, so far the CCP has come out with two reports, dated March 3 and July 9, 2010.
Mayoral Pleasure
Between July-August 2003, 52 ‘persons’ are said to have illegally occupied shops when Sanjit Rodrigues was the Commissioner and Ashok Naik the Mayor (May 4, 2003-July 17, 2004). They simply walked in and took over 37 shops of double height each with a carpet area of 18 sq.mt, and 15 other smaller-sized shops. Nobody knows how, but it happened despite GSIDC having a detailed official record of the occupants prior to the demolition (of the old market) matched with the shops/stalls they were to be allotted. The CCP has no record either of rents fixed or collected. It happens in Goa and happened again after phase II was completed and inaugurated in January 2007. This time around (between June 20, 2006-January 21, 2007) when Daulat Hawaldar was the Commissioner and Tony Rodrigues the Mayor, 62 shops were occupied. The CCP called it “occupational control”. A further 446 platform spaces were occupied by what the CCP described in its report as “different types of vendors.” The second CCP report said “the official roll was missing and the Mayor and a few councilors monitored shifting of the vendors and allotment of spaces.” It added: “Again, no record is available on the shifting of these vendors in the 2nd phase”. Now, try doing this anywhere in Goa, unless of course you are a migrant especially in Sancoale or chimbel, and believe me you will get your butt hauled to court.
Vendor’s rock
While India’s elite walk miles to get rid of their bulbous bellies, the poor walk miles just to get food. And so it is. At Panjim’s market, vendors’ rock and roll as happened again in January 2008, this time when Sanjiv Gadkar was the Commissioner or should I say Commissar and Tony Rodrigues continued to be the Mayor. This time, 344 stalls were ‘occupied’ and the report said, “this occupation took place, sans administrative intervention, directly under the supervision of the Mayor and some councilors”. Seriously, now at least do you see what I meant by ‘occupational control’. I was only trying to help. The report added: “In the light of what is stated, it will be improper for the present Commissioner (Elvis Gomes) to go into the roles of the above named, and if desired, the government may initiate a proper inquiry to be conducted by an independent authority to go into the entire issue”. A classic example of obfuscation made only in Goa and is tax free.
So, the next time you shop at the market, bargain like hell. Remember, the man/woman conning you has not paid rent, does not have a lease agreement and is using hardware (to make money) paid for by you. OK, so you need a booster shot? It could even ban you from the Commonwealth Games, if it takes place that is, and if you are suddenly accosted with a drug test. This is it. Huge bills amounting to Rs 12,06,952 and Rs 62,20,833 towards unpaid water and electricity consumption have piled up and continue climbing up as are the prices of the vegetables you are buying. Ditto for maintenance and repair costs. In fact bargain real hard on tomatoes especially, they contain the maximium (and cheapest in the market) antioxidants (glutathione) you need to clean up your insides from the heartburn of being a tax payer in Goa. There’s tea of course, but use that to calm your nerves. But again, you are Goan, nothing will have an effect on you. What a life!
(feedback lionroars.goa@gmail.com, 9822152164)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
