MARGAO: Mopa Vimantal Pidit Xetkari Samiti (MVPXS) said that villagers of Varconda, Casarvanem, Chandel, Amberem, Uguem and Mopa in Pernem taluka have rejected any offer of increased compensation by the government in exchange for their land acquired for the Mopa airport.
MVPXS said they will not give up their lands as they are required to hand them over intact to future generations by protecting them from real estate speculators and other destructive forces.
Committee Secretary Sandip Kamble in a release addressing the government said, “We hope that you will take into consideration the right to life of the future generations and agree to our demand of conservation of our unique plateau, by relinquishing all government claims on our lands threatened with displacement and incalculable losses by the ill-advised and economically unfeasible proposal to construct a second airport for Goa on our lands at Barazan plateau.”
“We have been corresponding with you and other authorities since 2009 demanding that the arbitrary proposal to build a superfluous airport on our lands, only for short-term profits of a few from land speculation, be scrapped, but we have never received an acknowledgement from you or any of the authorities,” Kamble wrote.
“We also remind you of the promise made by Prime Minister Narendra Modiji, to the entire human civilization that we will reduce fossil fuel consumption in a big way to fight climate change that threatens all of us. We have also not forgotten how the government denied most of us the right to a hearing by misusing the urgency clause in the earlier acquisition laws, and how in the recent past it misused all its machinery to deprive the rest of us of the rights under the new acquisition laws,” Kamble said.
