TEAM HERALD
[email protected]
PANJIM: Work on the demarcation of forests, which is being conducted in the state according to Supreme Court directions is facing a major obstacle due to the non availability of government surveyors, officials said.
These surveyors are required to survey and map the areas identified by the reconstituted government panels ~ north Goa and south Goa ~ Private Forest Division Committees. These were constituted some time back but due to lack of surveyors, proper mapping cannot be done, members and officials complained.
Sources say that this has been the case since last 3 years, alleging that the Sawant and Karapurkar committees, demarcation were more “ocular” in nature.
The forest department has asked for surveyors from the Land Survey department in writing but till date nothing has happened.
“The Land Survey department has not sent us any surveyors,” Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Richard D’Souza confirmed when asked if this was true, adding: “We have written to them but have still not got any surveyors.”
According to members, the committees, both for north and south, have been going to the sites and identifying areas that have the three criteria ~ 75% forest species; 0.4 canopy factor and stand alone has to be a minimum of 4 hectares. But if it is contiguous with a already declared forest then it can be less.
However, only the surveying and the mapping is left and the work has piled up.
But the Land Survey department has a different take on this issue, since they say that they are not supposed to send surveyors, “We can only entertain requests from the deputy collector or the SDM,” says Silvano Silveira, arguing that we need to get an order from them to send any government surveyor.
Stating that he is not even aware of any such request, Silveira says: “But we do not entertain any request from any other government department but only from the deputy collector or SDM.”
The survey was commissioned as per directions of the Supreme Court’s order. Before that there were three more reports.
According to the Sawant committee which was constituted on 24 January 1997, as per the apex court directions on 12 December 1996, the Government constituted an Expert Committee, under the chairmanship of Sadanand M Sawant, for identification of forests in the State.
According to the committee identified forests on Government Forest Lands are 1223.73 sq km
‘Government Forest Lands’ (including revenue lands) are 48.67 sq km; so a total of 1272.40 sq km area covered by plantations trees belonging to Government on Government Forest Lands is 279.75 sq km; forest on Revenue Lands are of 22.97 sq km; 48.35 sq. km on Communidade Land and area covered by plantations trees belonging to private persons is 791.22 sq km.
The second committee headed by H Y Karapurkar as chairman, submitted a report which was based on data collected/compiled by the Sawant committee. It report suggested that 58.2% of the total geographical area of the State is under forests.
