GRE, NFF slam Centre over proposed tweak to CRZ

PANAJI: Secretary of National Fishworkers’ Forum (NFF) and the joint general secretary of Goenchea Ramponkaranchea Ekvott (GRE), Olencio Simoes, has slammed the Union ministry for environment, forest and climate change (MOEF&CC) for allegedly deviously planning to amend the coastal regulation zone (CRZ) by reducing the ‘no development buffer zone’ to just a mere 50m.
“The current government, is following the footsteps of the past corrupt government and is trying its best to dilute the CRZ norms.This amendment is planned to protect and encourage the interest of the hotel mafia,” he alleged in a statement issued here.
Charging that the amendment is, by no stretch of imagination, in the interest of traditional dwellers especially the traditional fishermen, Simoes said on the contrary, it is to destroy the traditional occupants of the coast in toto. “The irony of the situation is that departments like MOEF are proving to be the most non-environmentally friendly department,” he said.
GRE president Agnelo Rodrigues, lamented that, during the BJP tenure over 800 cases of CRZ violations have been reported, out of which nearly 80% (497 cases) are related to violations by hotel industries and building lobbies. Nearly 57% of the CRZ violations in Goa have occurred in the Morjim belt itself. This amendment would allow for loopholes, thereby sparking a spree of construction activities along the coast, endangering the marine and coastal ecosystems of the state, he said.
Simoes pointed out that if the government was serious about legalizing fisherfolk homes, then it should have immediately constituted a district-level committee, notifying the fishing villages, surveying and mappings and dunes and legalizing all traditional houses as per CRZ notification, 2011, which has been ignored inspite of a clause in the CRZ notification, 2011, stating the same.