TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: Environment Minister Alina Saldanha recalled India’s first ever environmental agitation held in Goa against the chemical pollution caused by Zuari Agro Chemicals Ltd and the havoc it brought to the coastal village of Sancoale.
She was speaking at the Silver jubilee celebrations of Goa State Pollution Control Board.
The Country’s first agitation against environmental pollution, wherein dangerous chemicals were leached into the soil leading to major threat to marine and human life, forced Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to set up a State unit in Goa under the Water Prevention and Control of Pollution Act 1974, Saldanha said while gracing the occasion.
“Earlier it was CPCB which was managing the prevention and control of pollution in Goa. But this massive agitation made way for GSPCB,” she said, adding ‘now the situation is such that on daily basis the Board and the Minister receive some complaint or the other about pollution caused whether of air or water’.
GSPCB, an autonomous statutory organization was set up in the State on July 1, 1988 and was housed at the Goa Medical College and Hospital Complex.
In 1974, the Ramponkars or traditional fishermen with then social activist Matanhy Saldanha had protested against Zuari Industries, after it was found to have been pumping the dangerous chemical arsenic into the soil, rivulets and creeks resulting in withering away of agricultural crops in the fields as well as mass fish mortality.
Alina categorically said that the human beings themselves are responsible for increasing pollution level in the environment. “The land resources have continued to remain the same, however the density of population per sq mt has increased manifold….human action has led to pollution, which is beyond control,” she said.
Alina stressed on the need to reduce the pressure on land, which in-turn would reduce pollution.
On the silver jubilee celebration, GSPCB felicitated its former member secretaries, Chairmen and staff members who have been associated with the Board since its inception.
Earlier in the day, the GSPCB in collaboration of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) had organized a seminar on ‘Air Quality Monitoring Systems’.
Addressing the gathering, GSPCB chairman Jose Manual Noronha rightly pointed out that unplanned industrialization, consumerism and exploiting of natural resources beyond limits have been major causes of increasing pollution and environmental degradation. “It is we who have created pollution everywhere,” he said.
In 1974, the Ramponkars or traditional fishermen with then social activist Matanhy Saldanha had protested against Zuari Industries, after it was found to have been pumping the dangerous chemical arsenic into the soil, rivulets and creeks resulting in withering away of agricultural crops in the fields as well as mass fish mortality
