Even as yet another ‘smart city road’ caved in taking a sewage tanker down, the fifth heavy vehicle in the past 2 weeks, Congress that has launched an offensive against the shoddy manner in which works are being executed by the IPSCDL , has said that the Imagine Panaji Corporation has completed 6 years, 6 months, and 6 days without any tangible benefit to the City. Congress leader Elvis Gomes speaking to reporters on the sidelines of save Mhadei media meet said that the SPV called IPSCDL which was formed on the 16/ 08/2016 to plan, appraise, approve, implement, manage, operate, monitor and evaluate the smart city development projects had violated every rule in the book while dealing with a sum of nearly a 1000 crores of public funds. He said that the 50-points questionnaire submitted to IPSCDL to understand the mode of execution was yet to be answered. He also informed that a demand has also been placed with the CAG to conduct a special audit of the corporation as nothing has been placed in public domain about past audits if any.
Gomes said that the haphazard implementation of smart city mission as well as the Amrut mission was causing high levels of stress among people living in and around Panaji due to high level of dust pollution and traffic jams as digging of roads was carried out without any traffic flow plan.
“Entire government machinery appears to have abdicated its responsibility. The Union Urban Affairs Ministry has informed me that IPSCDL has responsibility to ‘plan, appraise, approve, implement, manage, operate, monitor and evaluate the smart city development projects’. Law must catch up with the perpetrators of this massive fraud on the people of Goa. Smart City Guidelines mandating people’s participation, transparency and accountability have gone for a toss. There is no information available even as guidelines mandate ‘cyber tours’ of ongoing works. Meanwhile businesses are also suffering due to the digging going on indefinitely. We will follow it up,” said Gomes.