PERNEM: For the villagers of Ugvem, keeping illegal sand extraction at bay continues to be an uphill task as canoes involved in the illegality operate under the radar, making it difficult for the authorities to trace them.
A walk along the banks of the Tiracol and Chapora rivers is enough to grasp the magnitude of unauthorised sand extraction in the area. While heaps of sand are dumped for sale by the riversides, the boats used to extract this vital construction resource are kept hidden, only to come out in the open during nightfall to clandestinely extract sand from the riverbeds.
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During the day, these vessels are anchored near the Naibagh and Kiranpani bridges along the Tiracolriver, and near the Camurlim jetty point and at Oxel, Revora and the Talarna Thomas bridge along the Chapora river.
It is common knowledge that they operate only late at night and right into the early hours of the morning, sometimes even till daybreak, plumbing the depths of the riverbeds for sand. But till date, the authorities concerned have failed to raid any such illegal extraction activity.
“The canoes involved in sand extraction remain anchored throughout the day and operate only during the night. As a result, it becomes difficult to keep a check on them. Nevertheless, we have caught the canoes red-handed several times and have informed the local police, but strict action was never forthcoming,” M Naik, a local, said.
Rampant extraction has slowly but surely degraded the Tiracol river, from Torxem right up to Keri, and the people who bear the greatest brunt are the farmers. For the past 11 years, farmers owning agricultural land along the river’s banks have been up in arms against the illegality, which they say has not only increased the depth of the Tiracol but also its width, leading to inevitable inundations of the fields and large-scale crop damage. They have now demanded a retaining wall along the river to protect their crops.
In January this year, the villagers of Ugvem decided to take mitigation measures of their own when they got together and planted 500 mangrove (kharfuti) saplings along the river bank as a natural barrier to thwart the ingress of water into their fields.
“Two decades have gone by and our battle against illegal sand extraction continues to keep us on our toes,” said former sarpanch of Mopa-Ugvem-Tamboxem, Shashikant Mahale. “We have organised several protests and have even dashed off letters to the authorities concerned, but to no avail. We’d even go on night patrols to catch extractors red-handed.”
Mahale further pointed out that villagers have sacrificed their Land for several government projects such as Highway, Tillari Canal and Mopa Airport. Land was provided for several project’s and what the people received was peanuts but now there is need to have a protection all along the river side to stop further destruction of river and land.
