Team Herald
PANJIM: Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant on Friday assured the Legislative Assembly that the Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) will not be finalised without examining suggestions submitted by 105 village panchayats and more than 4000 others received by the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA).
“Each and every suggestion given by 105 village panchayats and 4000 plus individual applications will be examined and wherever possible plan will be rectified. Also, the applicants will be informed giving reasons why their suggestions cannot be incorporated in the CZMP,” Sawant said during a discussion on a resolution tabled by Porvorim MLA Rohan Khaunte.
Khaunte had recommended that the government revert the CZMP to the panchayats where the voice of every concerned Goan can be heard in a statutory manner. He said there were discrepancies in the present draft CZMP under consideration which are completely divergent from the earlier CZMP.
Khaunte said that fishing villages, particularly in Penha de Franca, have been declared arbitrarily. Instead of marking fishing villages in a village-wise manner as per the CRZ Notification of 2011, the marking have been done in a ward-wise manner, he said adding that these arbitrary changes will deprive traditional dwellers, including fishermen, from the benefits of such notification. He also pointed out that the marking of Ribandar causeway has been changed from CRZ 1 to CRZ 2.
Leader of the Opposition Digambar Kamat said that National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) should have gone to the villages for consultation with stakeholders. He also complained that a large number of people were not allowed to enter the venues of district-level public consultations held on March 7.
Benaulim MLA Churchill Alemao said that hardly 50 people were allowed to attend public hearings and disclosed that he had written to the Chief Minister and the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC) demanding to hold village-level consultations.
“Please do not implement CZMP without taking villagers into confidence. If we do we will destroy Goa and younger generation will not spare us for that,” Alemao said.
Curtorim MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco urged the government to take villagers into confidence by taking the draft CZMP to villages, while Cortalim MLA Alina Saldanha urged the government to take all stakeholders into confidence and to seek inputs from villagers and dwellers.
Poriem MLA Pratapsingh Rane demanded to know under which rule the government was preparing the CZMP.
Environment Minister Nilesh Cabral told the House that the Department of Environment held taluka-level consultation in 2019 in order to explain the CZMP to the people. He said that the concept of the plan is to protect eco-sensitive areas and that Goa was the only State which was yet to prepare/finalise its CZMP.
According to Cabral, GCZMA has received suggestions from 105 village panchayats and over 4000 suggestions/objections from individuals. He said that fishing committees comprising experts will now visit villages and examine each and every suggestion by conducting ground truthing and only those objections found technically correct after comparing both the plans, necessary corrections will be recommended to the NCSCM.
He said that the matter is now subjudice and that the High Court of Bombay at Goa has fixed a hearing on April 5.
Khaunte, however, refused to withdraw his resolution and the demanded division. The Speaker then put the resolution for voting and it was defeated.
