A leading English newspaper reported today that a team comprising of the Chief Minister Mr Digambar Kamat, the power Minister Mr Aleixo Sequeira and the former CCP commissioner Mr Sanjit Rodrigues visited a site at Mandur in St. Andre Constituency to ascertain its utility as a garbage site in the wake of protests against the originally planned bainguinim site.
If this happens, the fears of the villagers of Mandur would be vindicated. Mandur has been ravaged on its hills by a mining individual without obtaining licences and complaints against the concerned culprit have been met with threats and dire consequences. The villagers of Mandur have borne this humiliation as if they were destined to bear the brunt of illegal hill cutting as part of their sins.
What has resulted from this rampage on the hills has been illegal cutting for rubble and illegal stone quarrying rendering open pits in the area. These pits must be a gleeful sight for government officials with an eye to bury these places with garbage of entire North Goa. If this happens the ecology and the water table of Mandur will be completely destroyed and the residents will have to bear the foul stench for the rest of their lives.
Do not trust this government or any government of the current dispensation for any hope of doing a good job with garbage. They have not given anybody any reason to believe them. For them garbage is the least of their alarms.
Residents of Mandur have failed to stop the treacherous trucker who has devastated Mandur's hills illegally. Will they now stand up and fight against the threatening garbage menace? Or let themselves be led like a sheep led to slaughter after all sheep in Goa have given a fight?
If Mandur fails to stand up like the rest of Goa has, it will suffer the fate of being innocently condemned to bear the brunt of everybody else's trash.
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