CALANGUTE: Hundreds of forest trees have been cut without any permissions to facilitate building a road to a sprawling private property on the slopes of the Arpora hill at Xim ward, on the interior side of the former Ingo’s Saturday Night Market, Arpora-NagoasarpanchRoshanRedkar said on Saturday.
Talking to reporters at the site, Redkar said there has been massive hill-cutting for around 400mtrs to provide an eight-metre access road to a private property on the hill. The access road connects to the main Arpora-Anjuna road at the night market.
“We came to know about this when some locals saw excavators at the spot on Friday evening and we saw that hundreds of trees have been cut and the hill has also been destroyed and stones used to build a road to the private property. No NOC has been taken from the village panchayat for this work,” the sarpanch said.
“They can’t just come and start a construction. They have to take TCP approval, forest NOC, panchayat NOC, and then start. This is total destruction which we are against. They’ve cut a huge number of trees without any permissions,” he said.
However, he said the land has been marked as settlement and the road has also been proposed. “We have no problem if the zoning has been changed and if the road has been proposed, but it should be done through proper channels,” he said.
Calangute MLA Michael Lobo, who was also present, said, “This is totally illegal and blatant destruction of nature. The environmental degradation that they have done should be penalised with a big fine.”
