Herald: Villages seemed to be ripped apart with road widening, landfilling,
felling of trees, more bridges and widened nullahs? And the TCP is allowing all this?
S T Putturaju: There are almost three lakh vehicles on Goa’s roads with a
population of fifteen lakh. Widening of roads, linkages is part of town and
country planning or how are vehicles going to move? It’s easy to point
fingers at us but the nation needs to decide. Sometimes there are an
additional one lakh vehicles coming from out of the state. In some countries,
they ban the sale of a second vehicle until you dispose of your first one and some even have a ban on vehicles or
sale of vehicles in certain regions. If the
nation takes up a policy like that and
vehicular numbers drop, we can stop
widening roads but until then,
we have to provide. We have bypasses
from Pernem to Canacona and we
are making more and more linkages
and roads only to accommodate the
vehicular traffic.
Herald: What about all these hotels
through the Industrial Development
Board, backdoor clearances from the
Bio-Diversity board, are you in favour of
Tiracol destruction through M/s Leading
Hotels?
S T Putturaju: On Tiracol I won’t
comment. All I will say is that the party
has met all norms and conditions
and has all the requisite permissions to
go ahead with construction. But on
the other hand, Goa needs infrastructure
like this to grow as a tourist destination
and get quality spending tourists. We
can’t have our shoddy infrastructure and
attract charter tourist who don’t spend
much. We have to upgrade to good
hotels to attract good tourists.
Herald: Your department is there to issue
licenses for construction but doesn’t
seem to be there for the common grieving
against illegal construction?
S T Putturaju: My department has created
a toll free number to complain against
hill cutting, landfilling and all those
irregularities. But just calling, lodging
a complaint is not all. The complainant
needs to be there when the police come.
The complaint has to be filed and taken
to a logical conclusion. Just calling and
informing doesn’t give our police the right
to just stop work or arrest. People seem to
want an easy way out.
Herald: What about the RP in abeyance?
What happens over there? The TCP has
done nothing
S T Putturaju: We have been following
certain guidelines from RP 2011 and 2021
and we have been regularly giving our
recommendations to the government.
We’re moving in a certain direction and
the plan maybe opened in parts shortly.
