Sawant rejected proposal to set up fisheries corporation: Paliencar

PANAJI: GFP MLA and former fisheries minister Vinod Paliencar said on Sunday that the proposal to create a state fisheries corporation has been shelved by chief minister Pramod Sawant without explanation.
By rejecting the proposal for a fisheries corporation, Sawant has worked against the interest of Goa, the Siolim MLA alleged.
“The chief minister had assured on the floor of the House that a fishing corporation would be formed, but then he rejected the file on July 25.He has given no reason and all that is written on the file is ‘rejected’,” Paliencar said.
Under former chief minister Manohar Parrikar, GFP and BJP had come together to form the state government based on a common minimum programme. One of the proposals agreed upon was to setup a fisheries corporation that would provide subsidised fish to people in the state.
“We wanted to give affordable fish to Goans and we promised this in our manifesto. We were working towards providing subsidised fish ,” Paliencar said while displaying documents obtained through RTI to support his claim.
The GFP MLA said that the file to create a fisheries corporation was moved on December 12, 2017 and was then sent for cabinet approval on September 7, 2018. He claimed that a budgetary provision of Rs 5 lakh was made for the fisheries corporation.
Paliencar said that after Parrikar’s demise and after GFP was dropped from the government, Sawant scrapped the idea to provide subsidised fish. All the three GFP legislators were dropped from the cabinet in July after ten rebel Congress MLAs switched over en-masse to BJP.