Road shows held to educate people on expressway ills
HERALD REPORTER
MARGAO, OCT 24
Village Groups of Goa organized a road show along with Goemchea Xetkarancho Ekvott to highlight and educate the people of the proposed Expressway.
The road show commenced from Dramapur and culminated at Cortalim before wending its way through Sirlim, Navelim, Nuvem and Verna, where questions were raised whether there’s a need for the 60-meter road.
Anthony Noronha pointed out that newspapers have been highlighting a road width of 35-45 meters, adding that the authorities will build only a 60-meter road in the years to come in phases.
He said people putting up close to the road will be the worst hit as the new road would entail setbacks, which will be useful only for people traveling long distance and not for the Goans, who would only end up in loosing their meager land.
Delano da costa informed that most of the land being low lying , filling of earth required to level to the road level will flatten all the hills in the vicinity which will be a huge man made disaster. Water bodies and rivers will also be left destroyed in the bargain, he said.
One of the participant spoke about land being acquired at a meager amount of Rs eight from the poor, adding that this will only be a gift for the rich, who will drive their Mercedes and BMW’s at high speeds.
“The road will be barricaded as speeds will be high so villagers will not be able to use road due to the barricades and will have to travel extra to join the expressway and also have to pay toll even after gifting their precious land to construct the road”, he added.
Joao Filipe said that new internal roads will be constructed to ease traffic, adding that this would only involve land acquisition and destruction to residential houses.
Cruz Rodrigues said that the government has cheated the people during land acquisition by giving false information.
“In the RP 2021, six townships were shown to be built and a 60 mts road was supposed to have been built to connect these new township”, he said and recalled that the Navelim gram sabha had passed a resolution to bye pass Goa and take road via Sawantwadi- Ramnagar- Supa to Karwar thus saving Goa.
People who gathered along the route to participate in the discussion opposed the proposed Expressway and expressed surprise that the government failed to take the people’s opinion into account when deciding on these huge mega projects.
