As you drive into Margao, on one side of the highway you’re greeted by an incomplete District Hospital for almost a decade and the other side is illegal brick vendors, cement block manufacturers, illegal plant nurseries and flower vendors and all this sadly on government land.
“We acquired land from farmers and mostly the Margao Comunidade and the Collector has had many meetings on the truck terminus but nothing has really come out of these meetings though one proposal besides the truck terminus is to rehabilitate the petrol pumps from the main city into this terminus space to service the Western bypass but all these are just plans but I can’t comment on the vendors using the space currently,” explains Deputy Collector Ajit Panchwadkar.
But a city based lawyer, representing the poor farmers who were forced to vacate their land in the year 2002 and stopped from further farming and denied a proper compensation, is saddened that the land is left fallow and is now used for illegalities.
“I agree the land was acquired and some compensation was paid and taken over by GSUDA but from then to now nothing has been done. As a member of the subcommittee of the SGPDA, we’ve notified this land as a truck terminus and also institutionalised some parts of the land that can pave way for the petrol pumps to be rehabilitated. We also identified several other spots around that land for petrol pumps but the onus is on the government and the office of the Collector to implement these projects and ensure there is no encroachments or misuse of these lands,” stated Margao Comunidade President Savio Correia.
“Till date we would have cultivated that land at least but were denied. Even a few metres away in the same time, land was acquired for an irrigational canal but then they build the Nuvem bypass to Arlem on that acquired land. It’s sad that the poor farmers like us are taken for granted. The compensation given there is also a pittance,” stated Rosario Perreira, a Nuvem resident farmer who was a tenant and cultivated that land and is angry to see slums and migrants carry out some cement work illegally along the highway in the same fields.
“Margao is so crowded and many traders have godowns in residential areas in Borda and Fatorda and trucks with goods come late night and block our parking and disturb our sleep at night. This terminus would be a hub to at least park these vehicles and they could enter the suburb only for unloading. Also the messy interstate buses on the KTC Bus stand could be managed from this venue. It baffles me that the government drags its feet on these matters,” stated Juvenille Monteiro, a Fatorda resident who also rues the fact that the fields were acquired to stop cultivation and promote a truck terminus.
