Lawrence Fernandes
I am glad Health & FDA Minister Vishwajit Rane has admitted his mistake by apologising to the Goans that his confirmation of the remark “permissible limits” was a mistake. By now all experts have made it very clear that formalin is absolutely hazardous to human beings and under no circumstances fish can have it on its own. There is at least one Minister who is honest and we can repose our faith in him concerning our well being.
Another MLA Francis Silveira of St. Andre Constituency has openly admitted to the Press and general public that, in fact even he as a fisherman and owner of fishing trawlers is involved in exporting the fish outside the State of Goa such as Kerala, despite the fact that he is availing the subsidy on diesel/fuel from the Government of Goa. Once again his admission to this fact must be appreciated. I need not elaborate here why subsidy was introduced to the local trawler owners as the intention was very clear that a common man would get the benefit of this system. But here everyone responsible has failed and proved incompetent.
Many times nature itself warns us but we simply ignore its warnings as we have seen so many disasters in recent times such as flooding, deadly diseases and so on.
What we have learnt from our parents is to become good citizens and they worked hard and always prayed for our success and educated us in various fields so that one day they would be the proud parents but many a times we did not live up to their expectations as I remember once a lady met her close friend from their school time after many years and inquired as to whether she was married, how many children she had and what they were doing! And swift came the reply! That she had three children and in her proud Konkani she said. “Eklo Dila Devak, Dusro Povak Ani Tisro Deuncharak” And her friend quipped! Good you didn’t have a daughter! And the mother of these three sons exclaimed why! Because, probably she would have become a MLA and slowly a Chief Minister!
Now that Francisco Silveira let the cat out of the bag, let us hope that the Government enforces the law that no export of fish caught in Goa is exported and under no circumstances the fish with formalin imported into Goa and the guilty punished. At the same time let us develop our Rivers for more fish and not allow to nationalise them for coal transportation which will kill us softly!
