Margao: The state’s District Mineral Foundation (DMF) funds continue to flow towards police vehicles, gym equipment for panchayats and projectors — expenditures that bear little to no connection to the welfare of mining-affected communities — even months after such misutilisation was flagged at a governing council meeting.A project-by-project account of DMF spending contained in official records provides fresh evidence of a pattern of expenditure starkly at odds with the fund’s mandate under the Pradhan Mantri Khanij Kshetra Kalyan Yojana (PMKKKY) guidelines.The South Goa DMF has funded the purchase of two 4×4 pick-trucks and two SUVs for the District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA), at a cost of over Rs 62 lakh. A separate project for two SUVs for the superintendent of police, South Goa, worth Rs 30 lakh, is listed as yet to start, with e-tendering already done.Further, four 4×4 vehicles for the District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) at Rs 75 lakh have been procured, the records accessed by TOI show.TOI reported in Aug 2025 that these vehicle purchases drew sharp questioning at a governing council meeting, with South Goa MP Viriato Fernandes asking why police departments couldn’t make their own budgetary provisions for such assets. The official records now confirm the purchases have since been completed or are in advanced stages.
The PMKKKY guidelines mandate that at least 70% of DMF funds go towards high-priority sectors — drinking water, environment preservation, healthcare, education, and welfare of women and children, the aged, and the disabled. Vehicles for police and disaster management authority fall under none of these categories. Even under the lower-priority infrastructure head, the guidelines envisage community-facing physical infrastructure — not departmental vehicle fleets.Projects sanctioned more recently reveal the drift has widened. Under the head “any other measures for enhancing environmental quality in mining district,” the South Goa DMF has sanctioned Rs 15 lakh for gym material for Mollem panchayat and Rs 15 lakh for gym equipment for Panchawadi in Shiroda. Both are listed as yet to start. A further Rs 4.25 lakh has been sanctioned for five projectors and one interactive display smart board — the same category of expenditure TOI flagged in Aug 2025 when police sought projectors for “crime awareness”.Stakeholders who earlier red-flagged the proposals said that gym equipment under “environmental quality enhancement” is something that would be difficult to defend before any independent audit. “The PMKKKY framework makes no provision for recreational infrastructure under this head, which is explicitly meant for environmental mitigation in mining-affected zones,” the source aware of the development said.The North Goa DMF tells a similar story. A Rs 2-crore project to fence abandoned laterite quarries — which, sources said, could have genuinely served both environmental and safety purposes — has been withdrawn and is “currently under revision”. A desilting project worth Rs 18 lakh in Pissurlem was withdrawn. Meanwhile, an ambient air quality monitoring (AAQM) system worth Rs 1.2 crore remains under scrutiny, with the governing council directing the GSPCB to provide clarifications before sanction is confirmed.An IT education project for North Goa worth over Rs 11 lakh is under “close monitoring” after the chairperson expressed “strong dissatisfaction” over slow progress. In South Goa, an identical IT education project sanctioned in 2023 for Rs 50 lakh has not started at all, blamed on “technical delays”. A skill development project in the hospitality sector worth Rs 50 lakh in South Goa has been cancelled.While mining-affected villages wait for water tanks and hospitals, police get new SUVs — from the same fund meant for those who bear the heaviest cost of mining.
