The Mopa airport project has never had a smooth run and now in its very initial stages is facing a rather turbulent takeoff. In the space of three days last week it faced two major setbacks, one of them forcing the concessionaire GMR to temporarily halt construction work, with the minister saying this is an agitation that will not end till the demands are fulfilled.
The first impediment to the ongoing work on the international airport came on Thursday last week when the High Court of Bombay at Goa stayed the felling of trees at the airport site till an appeal before the appellate authority is disposed. The High Court asked the Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF) to act as appellate authority and decide on the appeal of NGO Rainbow Warriors that objected to the felling of 21,703 trees at the Mopa airport site. The night previous to this, local residents had gathered at the site in a vigil protesting the cutting of trees.
The second hurdle, and one that was totally unexpected, came on Saturday when a different group of residents of the area, led the local MLA who is a minister in the State, protested at the site demanding employment to the locals. The minister ordered the work be stopped until the concessionaire signs a fresh agreement with the State government assuring to provide employment to the locals. According to Manohar (Babu) Azgaonkar, the local MLA and Tourism Minister, GMR had assured that jobs would be created and residents of Pernem would be given first preference. But, he went on to say, this was not put down in writing and the concessionaire has gone back on this promise. Ironically, this stoppage of work has come from the very group that has been backing the project all along, sweeping aside the objections to the project.
If these have been unexpected hurdles in the way of the project, the proposed Mopa airport has been attracting opposition since it was first proposed. A week earlier, Goans For Dabolim Only (GFDO), that has been spearheading the movement against the Greenfield airport, had in an elaborate presentation listed out all the reasons why the Mopa airport is not advisable in the State. Yet, at that time there was no reaction from the government, but exactly a week later on Saturday the work was peremptorily ordered to be stopped due to jobs to locals, with the minister saying the company had ‘betrayed’ the people and failed on the assurance made.
A week before this sudden stoppage of work, GFDO has stated in its presentation that, “It is now abundantly clear that this unviable, economically unfeasible and unnecessary second airport will heavily consume and drain Goa’s limited community resources without providing the requisite returns to the community of Goans.” A week later, a minister in the government inadvertently shored up this argument, as non-provision of jobs can be construed as not providing ‘requisite returns’ to Goans by his decision to stop work at the airport site.
The GFDO presentation had primarily dwelt on seven major points: flouting of procedures, policies, rules and decisions of the Steering Committee; misrepresentation and omissions; one sided concessionaire agreement against the interests of Goa; alleged expressway scam; alleged city side facilities land scam; alleged banking fraud; conflict of interest. GFDO had further elaborated on these, buffering up their arguments with facts gleaned from RTI replies. None of this caught the interest of the government, but jobs to locals has got a minister interested.
It would be very relevant to the government and the residents of Pernem taluka if GMR could list out the possible jobs at the airport that Goans could aspire for. As Azgaonkar said, the airport project was welcomed only because of the assurance of employment to the locals. If this means there were no other compulsions for the airport to come up, will it be stopped, and not just temporarily?
