Land use map: panel to submit report on suggestions, objections

NT NETWORK

MARGAO

Member secretary of South Goa Planning and Development Authority (SGPDA) Ashok Kumar on Friday informed that a committee, constituted to hear suggestions and objections to the land use map, will submit its report to the SGPDA in next 10 days.

Kumar said that the committee heard NGO members on Thursday. Around five NGO members were heard, during which their suggestions and objections were noted and which will be placed before the chairperson Dr Renuka Da Silva.

“We followed procedures as per law,” Kumar stated, adding that the hearing has ended and a report would be submitted to the SGPDA for further action.

The NGO members were heard in the presence of police. They sought to know details of the land use map prepared by PDA. “They wanted to know more details of the land use map like the age of structures etc,” he said.

The NGOs have claimed that the PDA has hastened the process by violating most of the rules under the TCP Act. “The land use map has not been prepared properly. The government-acquired properties are not shown, similarly religious structures are not mentioned, so also houses in the thick forest areas are missing on the map,” said Lawry Abranches, one of those heard
on Thursday.

Another NGO member said drones were used to complete the process of preparing the land use map, but there are no details of the structures.

He said, “We have made three suggestions to the committee – to rope in councillors to know information about structures; the agency, tasked with the job of gathering details, should do so along with SGPDA members and councillors, and putting out advertisements on newspapers asking citizens to verify plots, structures shown on the land use map.”

Abranches pointed out that there are lot of flaws in the prepared land use map. “We have demanded that it should be corrected. It has been prepared in a haphazard manner,” he said.