TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: If you want to go for a picnic on Chorla Ghat, you will have to be careful enough to bring your plastic waste back home and also ensure you maintain a decency code while enjoying at the various waterfalls atop.
The government plans to make this bio-diversity hotspot a plastic free and a ‘decent dress’ and those found breaking rules will be penalised.
Speaking on the floor of the House during a zero hour intervention on Friday, Environment Minister Alina Saldanha assured that she would order curbing of all such nuisance along the Chorla Ghat stretch. The department wants to ensure that this eco-tourism destination is garbage-free by placing 20 metal bins along the roadside by next week.
“We are contemplating a plastic-free zone, and also making arrangement for placing 20 metal bins. We will ensure there is no litter and law and order is maintained,” she said responding to concerns on women safety and cleanliness expressed by Sankhali MLA Dr Pramod Sawant. She conceded that the ghat faces issue of vehicle parking especially during the weekends when visitors go there in large numbers.
Going a step further, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar warned of imprisonment if anyone was found eve-teasing, littering or even wearing scanty clothing from ensuing Saturday. “I will issue an order on this,” Parrikar said. “I am giving a public assurance, but I need public commitment that when we take action there shall be no interference,” he said as MLA Sawant nodded
in agreement.
