Goa engineers up in arms against minister

Engineers in the state electricity department are up in arms against the state agriculture minister Francisco Pacheco for physically assaulting, threatening and abusing a junior engineer, Kapil Natekar.

The engineers also launched a pen down strike today after submitting a memorandum to chief minister Pratapsingh Rane.

They met the chief minister under the banner of the Electricity Department Engineers' Forum and demanded that the government should sack Pacheco, if he does not quit the cabinet.

Later, forum members met Power minister Digamber Kamat, the power secretary and chief minister. However, the forum has taken to agitation since these meetings did not yield any positive response.

The Forum said that if the government failed to meet their demand, they would intensify their agitation.

The forum is headed by Bharat Nigale and Includes the Junior Engineers Association, the Graduate Engineers Association, the Assistant Engineers Association, a representative of the Assistant Engineers (Degree) and the Executive Engineers Association.

The forum members also met Chief Electrical Engineer Nirmal Braganza, who maintained that all the engineers had to rally together and condemn the incident. The forum members informed that the chief engineer had assured all support.

Meanwhile, Pacheco sent a legal notice to Natekar threatening to file defamatory suit if Natekar did not withdraw the complaint lodged with the Colva police station.

The notice asked Natekar to withdraw the complaint with immediate effect and seek apology from the minister within 10 days, failing which Pacheco will be compelled to initiate appropriate legal proceedings against Natekar.

The notice said the allegation made by Natekar was false, frivolous, scandalous, baseless and defamatory in nature.

It said Natekar by lodging the complaint had tarnished Pacheco's image and has caused great damage and irreparable loss to the minister's reputation.