It may be recalled that last Sunday around 150 people attended a similar public meeting held in Colva and on Friday evening, over 150 Benaulim locals attended a public meeting held opposite the Holy Trinity Church.
Benaulim Civic and Social forum member Jose Rodrigues explained that they were enough grounds to call for the scrapping of the plan. He said the meeting was held to explain to the people via a power-point presentation what the Regional Plan 2021 means for the village. The people felt the time to protest was now in view of the state government’s decision to extend the time limit for sending suggestions to January 18.
While on one hand traditional fishermen’s houses look to get displaced in the regional plan on the other hand, apparent CRZ violations were ignored in favour of the builder lobby, alleged speakers at the public meeting while elucidating major concerns.
“The major disappointment was when we discovered that all the suggestions we had sent to the state government in 2011 have been completely ignored. What was the point in that exercise if none of our suggestions were incorporated? If they did not look at our suggestions for four years, how will they look at our suggestions now,” wondered a local.
This meeting will be important as the Benaulim panchayat has convened a special gram sabha on Sunday, January 10 at 4.30 pm. The same issues will be taken up at the meeting.
The meeting held on Friday lasted for almost 3 hours and was organized by the Benaulim Civic and Social Forum and Goans for Sustainable Development.
