Locals, p’yat cry foul over Tuem’s Electronic City project

Team Herald 

PERNEM: Even as construction on the road that provides access to the Greenfield Electronic City project has commenced, land losers have yet to receive their compensation amount. 

And work on the project hasn’t just commenced, having started in May 2019 but their issues haven’t been addressed. 

Moreover, they are not the only people who have their apprehensions, about the mega project. The Electronic City project of the State government will come up on an area of 6.5 lakh square metres at Tuem village at an estimated cost of Rs 75 crore. 

It is being set up for factories, which will look into the design and manufacturing of electronic and IT projects. 

For the government, it is aimed at solving the major unemployment rate in the surrounding areas.  

However, the locals fear that once the project is completed it will be the outsiders that will get employment. Their demands on the same have fallen on deaf years in the past. 

The same has even been discussed several times at the Tuem gram sabha over the last three years. Locals lament that these major demands have been ignored by the authorities concerned.

The Tuem panchayat at their gram sabha had passed a resolution that 50 per cent of the jobs be reserved for locals and that 20 per cent of the land out of the land be allotted to locals to carry out small time business   

These resolutions had been put forward Chief Minister and then Mandrem MLA Laxmikant Parsekar, by the Tuem village panchayat and the present MLA Dayanand Sopte had also been apprised of the same.  It had also been sent to the IT department and present and former IT Minister. 

According to panch members, the work on the project has commenced without taking the panchayat into confidence or considering their various issues from employment as well other civic problems such as waste management, electricity and water supply.  These are some of the major problems affecting the villagers. 

“There are few demands which we want the government to take note of. The previous MLA of Mandrem constituency Laxmikant Parsekar never bothered about people but we expect that the present MLA Dayanand Sopte will not walk on the footsteps of Parsekar and will support the people,” said panch member Uday Mandrekar. 

“The land losers have not received any compensation. We demand that land losers should receive compensation at market price. Also the authorities concerned should make provisions of giving a presentation to the panchayat on what is the project, what all will be included, what provisions they have made to tackle the garbage, e-waste and others project related things to the people, “ added Mandrekar. 

One of the land losers, is Amarnath Naik who lost around 8500 sq metres of land for the approach road of the Tuem Electronic City. The villagers grouse is that the work on the approach road commenced but he has not received his compensation amount and that there are many like him who have lost huge areas of land for the project. 

Besides, there are many farmers in Tuem who were cultivating the Alvara lease lands and have lost their livelihood due to this project. These include: Dhondu Krishna Naik (52375 sq mts), Keshav Babaji Naik (56,975 sq mts), Ganu Naik (41,900 sq mts) and Pundalik Kandolkar (32,300 sq mts + 63200 sq mts).