Sao Jose de Areal village, which is on the outskirts of Margao town and where the Margao Industrial Estate is situated, is slowly getting engulfed by migrant population. While there were no problems earlier, the present lot is causing a law and order problem in the village with their hooliganism.
Around two years back the village panchayat along with its ward development committee members surveyed the entire village to find out how many rooms were occupied by tenants who were paying rent to the owners.
The results were quite astonishing as it was found that as many as 1888 rooms were leased out to people and altogether there were 4,484 people living in these rented rooms.
While the migrant population, most of whom were working at the various units operating in the Margao Industrial Estate used to live in the rooms taken on rent from local owners, in recent times the village is facing another problem where migrants are purchasing land to construct their own houses.
“Most of these sub-division of plots are illegal as they have not taken the final NOC for the sub-division and plots are sold based on merely the provisional NOC,” said the village Sarpanch Perris D’Costa. He opined that because the migrants do not know the law, they do not even bother to ask for the final NOC of sub-division before purchasing the plots.
This is a major problem in the ward called Galli where nearly 150 migrants have purchased plots. Besides in the ward Comba an area of 15,000 sq mts has been sub divided and around 15 plots have been sold at Igorjewado in a similar manner and at Mugalli around 15,000 sq mts of land has been subdivided without following the proper procedure.
“The panchayat comes to know about the illegal sale only when it is brought to our notice that somebody is constructing either a road or a house as happened in Galli recently where we found the person creating sub-divided plots by constructing a road,” said Perris.
For the local population the influx of the migrants is not a problem as such except that they get irritated with their loud and boisterous behavior. “The earlier migrants mostly from Karnataka were well behaved and we had no problem with them. However, the new comers mostly from North Indian States like Bihar and Jharkhand are boisterous and behave like hooligans,” said one villager on condition of anonymity.
The North Indian migrants reportedly pick up quarrels with the locals especially in the night when they return home late after consuming alcohol. “The canal passing through the village is the place where the migrants mostly gather and create problems,” said Perris adding that the panchayat has asked the police to patrol the area more often.
However, for the elderly local people, some of whom live alone as their children are working abroad, the migrants are big help as they help them out with their odd jobs.
