MARGAO: Alleging that Margao town planning is in crisis, citizens across the State of Goa under the banner ‘Goyche Fuddle Pillge Khatir’ (GFPK) at the awareness meeting held on Sunday resolved to safeguard the people’s front for the town of Margao.
Architect Else Fernandes and Prof Antonio Alvares guided the people participating in the meeting, wherein Jack Mascarenhas, besides several other activists strongly demanded for a scientific and future generation’s friendly interdisciplinary approach to be adopted for Margao town planning.
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Stating that there are lots of alarming things in Margao ODP, Else said, “The Margao ODP is being executed by a consultant named Turbosketch despite having an office and staff for the same.”
“Is it right that the work of planning is outsourced when there are staff to do so,” she stated.
She claimed that draft ODP of Margao is ready when there is no no prospective plan of the State and no land utilisation policy in place.
“As per the Constitutional mandate of the 74th Amendment of the Constitution and its 12th Schedule, the public participation is also reduced to merely announcing notification deadlines and no actual engagement of the people nor awareness being attempted on the ground,” said Jack Mascharenhas, president of GFPK.
He said when the world cries for attention on the decade of action on sustainable development goals, Margao town is projected for growth till 2031 as organically as required by the political and land mafia nexus as it appears in the draft ODP 2031.
The GFPK has pointed out that River Sal has gone missing from the final CZMP plans of Goa, as the river itself is missing so are the khazans areas aligning it, no khazan areas are mapped within the Margao town in the final CZMP, flood hazard area though identified on the final CZMP of Goa has got no consideration in its planning.
Activists feel that cities need a lot of investments on infrastructure and hence necessary parameters broadly allow efficient use of resources and build resilience of cities for liveability. Margao, having history of being the commercial capital of Goa has no central business district identified. It being known as the cultural capital of Goa has the conservation areas being depleted and challenged with allocation of high FAR and commercial zones.
“All this and more issues reflect a complete collapse of an integrated planning exercise and all that can be seen in the draft ODP 2031 of Margao is an arbitrary FAR allocating exercise scattered and limited to plot wise FAR allocation which has no sustainable city vision,” alleged Mascarenhas.
