VASCO: The Sancoale gram sabha on Sunday discussed the proposal to oppose coal hub and river nationalisation projects in Goa however no decision was taken on the matter.
Participating in the debate on coal hub, gram sabha member Deepak Gaonkar claimed that coal handling and transportation should be stopped in Goa as the same is polluting the environment and is also posing risk to the lives of the people.
Later, a healthy discussion on the issue of river nationalization project was also held but gram sabha remained undecided and after consulting the panchayat members, Sarpanch Girish Pillai deferred the matter till next gram sabha by stating that the panchayat also opposed coal hub but since they do not have proper information about river nationalisation project, the panchayat would take a decision on both the matters after conducting a study.
Meanwhile, the gram sabha meeting turned noisy at regular interval over the issue of garbage dumping site near the residential plots behind ZIOL tanks in Sancoale and over non-implementation of important resolutions taken by the gram sabha.
On the issue of garbage, the residents claimed that they have been facing immense hardships due to dumping of garbage near their plots by the panchayat and therefore demanded that the panchayat should shift its garbage dumping site to some other location. To this Sarpanch Girish Pillai informed that the since panchayat does not have a garbage segregation site, Zuari industries allotted 1000 square meters of land for a period of five years. He also claimed that the panchayat has been making sincere efforts to handle garbage efficiently however if locals do not extend their support, then, the panchayat would be force to stop collection of garbage. “To avoid this confusion I just want your cooperation till the State government set up garbage treatment facility at Verna,” Pillai said.
Heated debate also witnessed during the gram sabha meeting after gram Sabha member Narayan D Naik questioned the panchayat as to why they failed to start the process to implement gram sabha decision taken during last gram sabha meeting. He said that during last gram sabha it was resolved to conduct fresh assessment of all commercial units operating under the Panchayat jurisdiction, inspection of all the Mega Projects, audit of Panchayat accounts, Vigilance inquiry on all the expenditure done by earlier Panchayat is still pending.
