Team Herald
MARGAO: Rainbow Warriors, an organisation of environmental activists, on Wednesday demanded that the government must first study past mining experiences and future challenges truthfully, listen to the people and then weigh all options for iron ore mining in Goa rationally.
Abhijit Prabhudesai, general secretary of Rainbow Warriors stated that any decision by the government will impact Goa and Goans in a big way, irreversibly.
Rainbow Warriors are alarmed with the haste with which iron ore mining through Mining Corporation, or by auction is being pushed blindly by the government and others, ignoring and silencing the voices of people and reason.
“How can we forget the violence of mining against our indigenous communities and nature? Self-reliant, self-governing village republics (gaunkaris), rejoicing in the abundance of nature for millennia, are now dispossessed, broken, and overthrown by mining interests; these mining victims are mischievously portrayed as ‘mining dependents’”, said Abhijit.
He alleged that the mining companies robbed our children to the scale of Rs 1 lakh crore, they cunningly passed all the liabilities to the locals in the form of truck loans and severe economic and environmental losses, in a criminal conspiracy involving government officials, banks, and mining companies.
According to him, the government was duty-bound to unconditionally write off all the loans of the mining victims and take criminal and recovery actions against the banks, mining companies and authorities who connived in this crime, but nothing is done for a decade.
