Team Herald
MARGAO: Even as the High Court has directed the State government to keep a strict vigil to prevent sand mining, an incident of illegal extraction of sand using a suction pump was reported at Macazana, located hardly 10 km away from Margao, on Thursday evening.
Environmentalists and social activists have expressed anger and demanded immediate action against the miscreants. The Goa government is yet to come up with a concrete policy against the mining of river sand.
Sources produced photographic evidence of people on a boat fitted with a suction pump, engaged in removing sand from the riverbed at Macazana, with the exact location and time on Thursday. The other places where sand mining is still rampant include
Corjuem-Curtorim,
Bacho-Guirdolim, besides Chandor, near the Cotta Railway Bridge.
Reacting to Thursday’s incident, environmentalist Abhijit Prabhudesai said, “The environmental, economic and social impacts of illegal sand mining are immeasurable. Mudflats, fish and shellfish breeding areas are destroyed, along with most benthic communities, making the river lifeless by extracting sand.
He said that bandhs, khazans, fishing ponds, coconut plantations, etc are washed into the sea due to the destruction of the riverine ecosystem, and the restoration of rivers and khazans will cost huge sums of money and take years to accomplish.
Fisherfolk and other citizens living along the rivers are at risk of violence from the money-crazed sand mafia, which is backed by the police, local authorities and the government itself, he alleged, adding that it was part of the grand plans of crony capitalists to
convert Goa’s living rivers into dead shipping channels for coal.
