PANJIM: NGO Goa Foundation on Friday alleged that the draft Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP), which is been prepared without taking stakeholders like villagers into confidence, is basically a document to legitimise all the illegal constructions that have come up along the coastal belt. 

Chennai-based National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) prepared draft CZMP has been kept open for public scrutiny. The public hearing to seek suggestion and inputs will be held on July 7 in North & South Goa. 

Speaking on the draft plan, Goa Foundation director Claude Alvares alerted public to examine or cross check whether the plan includes all those illegal constructions that have come up post 2011 CRZ notification. “This plan is nothing but a licence to legalise all the illegal constructions,” he charged pointing out how the plan has not shown the five-star resorts like Marriot and Cidade-de-Goa in the CRZ area. 

He has asked the people, gathered for the meeting, to identify all those structures which are either illegal or does not exist but are part of the plan. “Also, see the omission, deletions or additions as far as eco-sensitive areas are concerned,” he said.

Alvares also said that the plan, which speaks of coastal management, should have focused on the restoration of beaches and not the present status of the beaches. “There is nothing called measures to restore the damaged caused to the beaches,” he said. 

Pointing to the fact that the draft plan is prepared keeping CRZ notification 1991 as its base, the environmentalist said that ‘the first demand during the public hearing would be that the plan be redrafted considering the CRZ notification 2011’. 

He also said that the drafting process has violated the basic rule of CRZ notification, which says that the stakeholders be consulted at the preparation stage of the plan. “However, in this case it has not been done so,” Alvares said. 

“People sitting in Chennai have drafted this plan while having idli, dosa. They never thought of consulting locals or maybe they considered Ministers, MLAs and builders as the stakeholders and consulted them,” he alleged.