CALANGUTE: To create awareness on the recently notified Outline Development Plan (ODP) 2025 for Calangute-Candolim, a public meeting was organised by the Social Action Team of Calangute parish and the Centre for Responsible Tourism at St Alex Church Hall, on Sunday.
Since long, the villagers of Candolim and Calangute have been demanding that the plan be scrapped and the entire coastal tourist belt be denotified as a planning area. This programme was organised to create awareness among the people on different issues of the villages and the environmental impact due to unplanned development.
Calangute Constituency Forum President Premanand Divkar briefed the people on the difference in the draft ODP and the notified ODP 2025.
“A huge area of 52,000 sq mts on the Baga hill has been converted from orchard to settlement zone. The Boa Viagem hill that the Calangute panchayat had assured that they would not allow to be converted has been turned into residential area. The beach stretch within 50 meters has also been shown as settlement. The ODP was not discussed with the people at the gram sabha. Neither were the hearing and suggestions recorded properly,” he said.
“Although the Outline Development Plan (ODP) 2025 for Calangute-Candolim was approved and notified on November 30, till December 15 it was not displayed at the panchayat. They are aware that we have 30 days’ time to file a petition and hence they put the notification up at the panchayat late to waste precious time. They killed 15 days of the people by not displaying it earlier at the panchayat,” Premanand added.
The programme was also addressed by Goencho Avaaz Co-convener Capt Viriato Fernande who requested the people to understand where we are heading to. “Through this plan we need to see whether we are heading towards a betterment or destruction. We do not want to see in Goa a repeat of the man-made disaster that occurred at Kerala,” he said.
While Member of the Goenkars Against PDA (GAP), Arturo D’Souza enlightened the gathering on the entire faulty process adopted of preparing the ODP.
