TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
MARGAO: The Goans for Dabolim Only (GFDO) has said the recent statements by Dabolim MLA Mauvin Godinho, has clearly exposed his ignorance and his lack of effort to understand the issues involved in the viability of two airports for tiny Goa.
Referring to Godinho’s recent statement that “Some people with vested interests have carried out propaganda that the Dabolim Airport will close down” (after Mopa Airport is set up), GFDO Convenor Fr Eremito Rebello has said that it is obvious that Godinho has not even bothered to read the expert reports by ADPI and ICAO, that clearly substantiate with facts and figures, why Dabolim Airport is bound to close down once Mopa Airport comes into being. “It is a pity that the Dabolim MLA shows total lack of will to try and understand the deeper implications in an issue that is of such crucial importance to the economy and the Congress party’s constituents of South Goa, who have elected the party to power time and again in the past,” he said.
Fr Rebello, however, said that Godinho’s stand on the Airport issue is quite understandable, given the significant role he has played in denotfiying 36,800 sq mts of land in Sy 8/1, Dabolim, which had been notified for setting up of crucial city-side facilities for Dabolim Airport. “This land, now in the hands of a commercial builder, was denotified by the authorities, on the assurances of Godinho of the existence of alternate land of 70,000 sq mt available opposite to the airport.
Almost three years later, this obviously non-existent parcel of land conjured up by the Dabolim MLA has yet to be discovered. However, in the meantime a builder has set up a commercial structure at breakneck speed on the originally allocated Sy 8/1,” Fr Rebello added.
He said that the constituents of Dabolim as well as the people of Goa should reflect upon the attitude of the Dabolim MLA, who has been instrumental in strangulating Dabolim Airport, not only by snatching the land that was allocated for its city side facilities, but also by continuously propagating the setting up of Mopa airport in a state where experts have declared the unviability of the dual airport policy, thus ensuring that Goa’s Dabolim Airport would be ultimately closed down.
