Mohammed Sajid
Neil Island, June 20: The Directorate of Agriculture recently constructed 10 poly houses in Neil Island, which cost several lakhs each. These poly houses were provided to farmers under some schemes of Government of India with nearly 75% subsidy and each beneficiary of Neil Island had to pay Rs. 50,000 each.
But now it has been observed that within one month of construction half of these poly houses have collapsed. In some, the wielding works went wrong while in others cooling pad got damaged.
According to villagers, substandard GI pipes have been used by the contractors in these poly houses and this is the reason why after a recent heavy spell of rain at Neil Island half of the Poly Houses constructed by the Agriculture Department suffered heavy damages.
“The G.I. Pipes used in these poly houses are of so poor quality that it has bent like a bow. We couldn’t even start any kind of cultivation inside these poly houses and it collapsed,” alleged a farmer of Neil Island.
When Andaman Sheekha contacted Dr. D G Pandey he informed that as he has taken over as Director of Agriculture Department recently he doesn’t have knowledge about these Poly Houses.
However he immediately crosschecked the matter with his subordinates infront of Andaman Sheekha and directed his staffs not to release payment to the contractor for the Poly House until and unless the contractor rebuild or repair the Poly Houses.
This is a simple case of looting public money by private contractor, which came into light just because there was heavy rain in Neil Island and the Poly Houses had collapsed otherwise the Agriculture Department would have cleared the amount to the contractor, without any objection.
