Minister rules out scam in purchase of China-made CFL bulbs

Panaji, Jul 18 (UNI) Goa Power minister Alexieo Sequeira today denied reports of any ''corruption'' behind purchase of China-made 9,000 CFL bulbs of 80V capacity for street lights at a cost of Rs 51.55 lakh recently.

Addressing mediapersons here, the minister said the order was made through competitive bidding, in which a Mumbai-based company was shortlisted for supply of the consigmnent.

The bulbs were available only in China and not in India and the supplies were made with warranty.

The decision to replace the sodium vapour lamps with CLF bulbs for street lighting was taken in order to save 6 MW of electricity, apart from enormous savings on maintenance of various components, he said.

The minister further said the government had decided to spend Rs 59.50 crore in the current fiscal on various developmental and maintenance works with funds obtained from levy of infrastructure development cess.

The government started collecting 18 paise per unit on domestic consumer and 58 paise on industrial consumer as industrial development levy since the current fiscal, generating an additional Rs 40 crore revenue per annum.

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