SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2024
Team Herald
PANJIM: All eyes are focused on the crucial public hearings on the draft Coastal Zone Management Plans (CZMPs) to be held at Panjim and Margao on Sunday, following strong opposition by village panchayats and NGOs.
Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA) has convened the public hearings to finalise the draft CZMP submitted by the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM), Chennai.
The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) had asked all coastal States and Union Territories (UTs) to prepare their CZMPs through the agencies authorised by the Union Ministry and based on the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification, 2011.
However, most village panchayats and gram sabhas have passed resolutions demanding that Sunday’s public hearings be cancelled and that hearings be held at the panchayat level so that more villagers can participate and submit their suggestions and objections. Many panchayats have complained that the time given to study the draft CZMP was inadequate though village level maps were made available at the village panchayat offices.
NGO Goa Foundation has protested the one-month time limit for consultation on the draft CZMP and has demanded that the 60-day limit as mandated by the Environment Protection Rules, 1986, for the public hearing procedures be given.
According to Goa Foundation director Claude Alvares, the people are welcome to make their suggestions/objections during the public hearing, but they also have the right to file detailed written objections before March 30, 2021 as GCZMA has no authority or power to reduce the time-limit from 60 to 30 days.
Goa Foundation alleged that several gross errors have been allowed into the draft CZMP. Re-zoning of beach areas like Querim (Tiracol), Palolem, Cola have been carried out without any legal basis. Each village community is finding hundreds of errors in the village plans.
The foundation blamed GCZMA for putting up the maps for the public hearing without examining them first. As a result, all the errors pointed out by village communities during the 2019 public consultation have remained in the new draft plans. This only means all village level inputs into the plan process have been ignored. This is wholly unacceptable, Goa Foundation said.
Alvares demanded that the CZMP should correctly record information about the coast and communities.
National Fishworkers Forum (NFF) vice chairperson Olencio Simoes and 12 other fishermen associations have also demanded postponement of public hearings scheduled on March 7.They have demanded that public hearings be conducted at multiple locations, at taluka levels, on different dates, so that maximum representatives of the fishing community can attend and submit their objections so that justice is met to each and every individual.
Simoes said that the CRZ Notification 2011 was passed with an intent to ensure livelihood security to the fisher communities and other local communities, living in the coastal areas and to conserve and protect coastal stretches, which is mentioned in the preamble of the CRZ Notification 2011 and therefore the draft CZMP is of utmost importance to the fishing community and in protection of the coastal ecology.
The Citizens for Coastal Communities has appealed to the people to participate in the public hearings to protect Goa’s interest even as it said that public hearings are a farce.
According to Citizens for Coastal Communities convenor Xavier Fernandes, the CZMPs do not show many of the fishing rights, breeding areas and also ecologically sensitive areas. Though CZMPs are only supposed to map the local communities and environment, port limit has been illegal demarcated in rivers, hand them and entire khazan lands and lands beyond on a platter to the port authorities, for the use of corporates.
