Rose­marie Sant

Beau­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Preysal Round­about in Cou­va, which was start­ed by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) in 2014 and has so far cost $30 mil­lion, will soon get a new lease on life as Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to change the orig­i­nal in­tent of the project and will in­stead use the area for a flag­ship CNG sta­tion.

For the past three years, con­crete huts and so­lar pan­els con­struct­ed by the NGC as part of a beau­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme have been emp­ty and un­used. How­ev­er the area is well main­tained and se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel on site en­sure the com­pound is kept safe.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan said the planned ser­vice sta­tion will dis­pense both CNG and liq­uid fu­els.

NGC’s orig­i­nal con­cept for the fa­cil­i­ty un­der the board, then chaired by Roopchan Chadeesingh, was for con­struc­tion of bus and pedes­tri­an shel­ters, as well as grass main­te­nance and land­scap­ing/beau­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Us­ing de­signs by Tal­ma Mill Stu­dios Lim­it­ed, in 2014 NGC pre­sent­ed a beau­ti­fi­ca­tion plan to then Works Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan which in­clud­ed recre­ation­al ar­eas, ponds, re­tail ar­eas, a mu­se­um and aes­thet­i­cal­ly ap­pro­pri­ate green­ery, aimed at pro­mot­ing a sus­tain­able en­vi­ron­ment with so­lar pow­ered ma­te­ri­als and re­cy­cling of waste wa­ter, among oth­er things. But the project was nev­er com­plet­ed.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of the mod­ernised Star­lite Ser­vice Sta­tion in Diego Mar­tin, Khan an­nounced that the flag­ship CNG sta­tion at the Preysal Round­about will have ten CNG dis­pens­ing points, five gaso­line and diesel dis­pens­ing points.

Khan gave no de­tails on how much ad­di­tion­al mon­ey will have to be spent on the fa­cil­i­ty, or a time­line for its open­ing.

He al­so an­nounced that in keep­ing with its strat­e­gy for wider im­ple­men­ta­tion of CNG as a ma­jor ve­hic­u­lar trans­porta­tion fu­el, Gov­ern­ment has set a tar­get date of De­cem­ber 2020 for the 30 per cent con­ver­sion of ve­hi­cles in the fleets of Gov­ern­ment and state en­ter­pris­es.

In ad­di­tion, Gov­ern­ment had agreed that from Oc­to­ber 1, 2018, and with­in 12 months of fis­cal 2019, all new ac­qui­si­tions of fleet ve­hi­cles in gov­ern­ment will be ei­ther CNG or hy­brid.

Khan said with the ex­pan­sion of the CNG net­work, “sys­tems are be­ing put in place to en­sure se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty of re­fu­elling CNG ve­hi­cles at ser­vice sta­tions.

“A ra­dio fre­quen­cy iden­ti­fi­ca­tion or RFID tag is to be in­stalled on all CNG ve­hi­cles,” he said,

This will in­form whether the CNG sys­tem is ap­proved and the ve­hi­cle has met its in­spec­tion sched­ule.

Khan said mod­erni­sa­tion and ex­pan­sion of re­tail mar­ket­ing net­works is one of the ma­jor goals of Gov­ern­ment to en­sure a re­li­able, safe and ad­e­quate sup­ply of fu­el to the trav­el­ling pub­lic.