MMC issues one-month notice of termination to private agency

| AUGUST 15, 2018, 07:19 PM IST
MMC issues one-month notice of  termination to private agency

the goan I network

MARGAO

Around nine months after the Margao Municipal Council had roped in Bapu Environmental Social Service Organisation to collect waste door-to-door in the six municipal wards, the civic body has finally issued a one-month termination notice to the agency.  

While many in the civic body and outside might have expected the Municipal administration to go for glaring discrepancies over the tender procedure, Margao Municipal Chief Officer Sidhivinayak Naik, however, has issued the notice to Bapu on grounds that it would be economically unviable for the Council to pay any additional amount to the agency.

Bapu had on August 1 asked the civic body to make arrangements to pay GST from March 2018 onwards. The MMC Chief Officer, however, was clear in stating that the civic body is not bound to  pay any additional amount not mentioned in the MoU between the Municipality and the agency. Naik has invoked Clause No 24 of the MoU, giving 30-day notice to the contractor of its intention to terminate the MoU, adding that the MoU will stand terminated on the expiry of one-month.  

What’s interesting to note is that while the Chief Officer preferred to touch on the procedural discrepancies in the tender to terminate the MoU, Naik, however, did refer to outgoing Chief Officer Johnson Fernandes’ complaint dated January 19, 2018 to the police about a misleading bill raised  with the intent to allegedly misappropriate 

funds of the Margao Municipal Council.  

Questions are being raised in the corridor of the civic body whether the Municipality is deliberately avoiding making a mention of the procedural lapse of accepting Bapu’s tender form after the last date of receiving applications. That the procedural lapse did not find mention in the termination notice despite the fact that Municipal Chairperson Babita Angle Prabhudesai had publicly admitted the procedural lapse indicates that the civic administration is ready to accept the mistake and continued the MoU with the contractor for the last nine months.  

While the civic body had maintained stoic silence on the demand made by the Shadow Council for Margao, which had exposed the procedural lapse and subsequent issues relating to payments to Bapu, it was only after Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar maintained on the floor of the House expressing his unhappiness over the activities of the contractor.


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