Angelo Pais
Your editorial on the mining agitation and the report on Herald makes very good reading. Congrats for your bold stand on the agitation.
The so-called mining dependents have nothing to complain. It is a Supreme Court order for very good reasons, to save our State of Goa and to save the money which belongs to the people of Goa which is being stolen to the mining lobby in collaboration with the politicians.
The agitators should not have burnt the effigy of Claude Alvares who is trying to save our Goa. The government of Manohar Parrikar first stopped mining for the same reasons that the Supreme Court has done. Why did the Goa Govt not auction the mines so long, so that the mining would continue? Isn’t this situation a creation of our Govt?
The solution is simple: Auction the mines and mining will go on. There is no need for an agitation! Why don’t the so-called dependents insist that the mines are auctioned at the earliest so that mining resumes quickly? Are they hand in glove with the mining lobby which makes huge profits? Are not the politicians hand in glove with the agitators to take kickbacks from the mining lobby? How many trucks and other machinery are owned by our MLA’s directly or indirectly? The truth is clear from the fact that even our MLA’s joined the agitation!
I keep saying “so-called mining dependents” simply because they are not really dependents; most have made enough money to last for long. They can start selling the gold and other assets they amassed from the money they made from mining at the cost of Goa and the people of Goa, making thousands of people in the mining area suffer terribly due to rampant mining!
There can be no sympathy for these agitators, particularly the way they behaved at the agitation. They should have been arrested, and the MLA’s who joined, all the more need to be arrested for breaking the law and insulting the Supreme Court. The president of the All Goa Taxi Owners Association should be arrested for his inflammatory speech and probably pulled up for contempt of court for his speech. Why is the government sitting quiet? Is this not a clear sign of being hand in glove with them?
