Embellishment and lighting works at Grand-Bassin

I make reference to the article published on Saturday 13th January 2007 under the caption ? Coze members ? Divine bonte ! which is authored under the pseudonym of Puck. I take it that he does not have the courage of his conviction to reveal his true identity and therefore has preferred to hide under a pen name.

All the same, I judge it appropriate to reply to his interrogation in as much as allegedly he is a taxpayer and therefore is entitled to know the pertinence of spending each cent of public money. As a matter of fact, the DWC is only a contractor on the job. Puck rightly guessed so but he has preferred to create a confusion in the minds of the public and in so doing attempt to cast aspersions on my person.

It is public knowledge that the DWC is a registered go-vernment contractor and therefore accountable to the Director of Audit and the Parliament as well. On this count, pretending that DWC is disbursing money out of its kitty for a private undertakikng smacks of ignorance unless, of course, one wants to articulate bad faith.

Incidentally, all such embellishment and lighting works, as mentioned, has been financed by the State and I challenge Puck to query his parliamentarians as to the need and pertinence of spending public funds on matters of religious connotations. So, according to Puck such and similar money spent for the benefits of all religious denominations in Mauritius is a sheer waste and instead such resources should have been diverted to build decent houses for squatters. The question is, why houses only as it would be more convenient to encourage a culture of ?Manger Boire? and dish everything free while other hard-working and law-abiding citizens should be toiling and sacrificing to make both ends meet, including the putting up of decent houses for them to live in.

As a matter of fact, the remark of Puck reminds me of a similar incident which took place some times back when Government thought it expedient to enlarge and rehabilitate the road leading to Grand Bassin in the wake of Maha Shivaratree festival. It would be recalled that there was a hue and cry and, judging by the content and tone of the so-called contention, it nearly verged on indecency and racism.

Similarly, Puck has intentionally evaded to speak of the thousands of tourists, as duly highlighted in the same article, who are converging to admire such a feat, to take shots and mark Mauritius abroad. In so doing, this exercise contributes to generate billions of rupees in the Government?s coffers. But Puck prefers to play the ignorant in as much as this manifestation of diverse cultures in the Mauritian landscape is unique and constitutes our strength. Our cosmopolitan Mauritius takes pride in being a model to the world to the extent that Cultural Tourism is now one of the pillars of our tourism sector. But Puck is too ignorant to appreciate all these...

Dhaneswar SOOBRAH