TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
MARGAO: Is there any competent authority or agency in the state to frame guidelines to regulate mushrooming of mobile towers or to answer queries relating to towers and their use?
An activist, who had knocked the doors of the Chief Secretary for information under the RTI, has found to his shock and surprise that agencies such as the Goa Pollution Control Board, Department of Information Technology, Department of Science and Technology, Directorate of Municipal administration et al have all maintained that they are not connected with mobile towers.
The question over the mobile tower regulation policy came to haunt the authorities after Savio Dias sought information under RTI from the Chief Secretary, seeking to know whether any guidelines for regulation and installation of Base Transceiver Structures/ mobile towers in the state.
When the RTI application landed in the office of the Department of Information Technology, the PIO Deepashri Dharne pushed the ball in the court of the Department of Science, Technology and Environment with a request to furnish the information directly to the applicant.
Surprisingly, the Science, Technology and Environment department got back to the Department of Information Technology saying the information sought by the applicant is not dealt by this office. On the contrary, PIO Gautam S Kamat transferred back the application back to the Department of Information Technology on grounds that the information sought by the applicant does not fall within its domain.
That’s not all. The PIO, Information Technology then transferred the application to the Department of Town and Country Planning, Goa State Pollution Control Board and the North Goa Planning & Development Authority with a request to provide information to the applicant.
In the meantime, the Goa State Pollution Control Board has written to Dias stating that no data is available with the Board regarding the mobile towers.
The Board PIO further stated that it has not issued any guidelines or policy for regulating the installations of mobile towers in Goa.
With the various agencies pushing the buck on each other, the matter has come to full circle after more than a month as the Chief Secretary has fixed hearing on the query on Wednesday.
