Govt museum issued parking contract over phone, reveals RTI

Times of India: Chennai: Monday, January 08, 2018.

You might think the government procedure to allot a parking contract is to hold an auction or issue a tender. But, at the Government Museum in Egmore, it took just a phone call to hand the parking contract to state-owned Texco in 2005. What's more, 12-and-a-half years down the line, the move is yet to be ratified after questions were raised by top government officials. There is also no transparency on the parking fee and the amount collected or remitted to the government.

This came to the fore after Govi Thangaraj, an auto driver, filed an RTI asking for details in March last year. The department said it did not have the information, but later during a hearing at the TN information commission in December, documents dating back to 2005 were handed over to him.

These documents accessed by TOI show that in 2005, the then director of museums, an IAS officer, handed over the parking fee collection work at the Government Museum campus to Texco after a telephonic conversation. This is because the earlier contract given by the Public Works Department (PWD) expired in 2002 and it was being collected departmentally through the same contractor. There was an oral consent to this arrangement, but the IAS official says in the letter that government orders must be separately obtained for allocation of the contract to Texco.

However, the then additional secretary to the Tamil development, culture and religious endowment department wrote to the director, museums, in the same month, stating that the 'sought ratification of your action is not in order and it could not be ratified.' This is ostensibly because the then process involved the conduct of a public auction to offer the contract. The main objection to handing over the contract to Texco is blurred in the copy given to Thangaraj.

Officials currently at the museum confirmed that the move did not have ratification, but declined to comment further. In a letter dated December 12, the PWD told the RTI applicant that they did not conduct any auction for the parking contract and had no records on the details of parking fees taken by Texco.