GUIRIM: The Guirim Comunidade on Monday condemned the haphazard National Highway (NH) 17 expansion work being carried out along the villages of Guirim and Bastora.
“We are immensely pained to see the systematic and reckless destruction of the paddy fields and low lying land bordering the Bastora River and flowing towards Mapusa at the Tar junction. In the process of this work a portion of the river has also been encroached at least at three places and the surrounding vegetation has been mercilessly engulfed,” Comunidade President Tulio de Sousa said.
Tulio said that the area concerned is a catchment for the hills in the background that drain into these fields during the monsoons and the river serves to carry the overflow towards the northern end with a sluice gate at the south eastern end.
“It is really sad to see that a natural eco-system stands totally destroyed. The devastating effects of this man-made and ill-conceived plan is bound to be felt by the villages of Guirim, Bastora and the city of Mapusa as flooding looks inevitable. It is unimaginable that technical experts have designed a huge embankment including three badly planned flyovers within a short radius of two and a half kilometres from Tar Junction in Mapusa to the Guirim Cross Junction,” lamented Tulio.
“Moreover, one look at these narrow underpasses reveals the myopic and badly planned intersections without any bell mouth openings to facilitate smooth traffic flow. Actually, one sees this stretch as an ideal situation for an elevated corridor that would have caused less environmental destruction being traffic sensitive and aesthetically pleasing,” he added.
