“If one checks the topography of the area along the River Sal, one will find low lying paddy fields along the river banks. Our ancestors had toiled hard, to scientifically put in a robust three-way system. These areas only provide food in the form of grains, vegetables and fodder; they act as catchments to arrest flooding during monsoon and also as reservoirs for recharging of the water table. Any attempt to change or destabilise the set-up, will spell disaster to the inhabitants of the area,” Rudolf Barreto, Benaulim activist
“The villagers are not against development. The Western Bypass can smoothly progress on stilts. This will not only save the paddy fields, but will also prevent cutting down of hills/mountains to mine huge amount of soil required to build the embankments in the low-lying areas of Benaulim, Mungul, Seraulim, Nuvem and other villages,” Rudolf added.
“In Nuvem, for widening, the govt has 35 meters of acquired road width that had not been utilised. Also, the area was a wetland playing host to migratory and resident species of birds and its fields which were cultivated mostly by the minorities are now being destroyed,” said Aashish Kamat, an activist from Margao.
Jose Roque Andrade from Nuvem also objected to the size of the road expansion and questioned what had happened to the assurances given by the PWD Minister at the public hearing. “The filling of fields and low-lying areas on the southern side of Nuvem is in progress. The mud should be removed and pillars should be installed in this area. Wet mud is dumped along the existing road, which is seeping into the fields along with rain water, these could be prevented by erecting retaining walls,” said Jose.
“The PWD minister had also assured that the pipes will be replaced by culverts for proper flow of water and also for animals to cross under the road and the plan will be revised as per requirement but we see pipes are installed instead of culverts and mud is dumped over the pipes.
Activist Sidharth Karapurkar flayed the government and referred to the letter by TCP to the PWD saying it had not given permission for extraction of land/ hill cutting. He criticised the government for not taking information from the panchayats and not carrying out environmental impact assessment studies.
“There is already an Eastern bypass passing through Navelim, also the present road is being widened to 4 lanes, why do we need an entirely new by-pass? The present Eastern Bypass could be properly aligned. The Western Bypass was planned 30 years ago,” said Navelim-based activist Joseph Vaz while pointing out that Navelim had developed considerably like Margao. Joseph also lamented that the government was not listening to the grievances of the affected farmers in the route passing through Navelim whose fields were getting destroyed.
