Goa’s Minister for Environment and Forests Alina Saldanha has taken on the Mormugao Port Trust and has voiced opposition to the latter’s plans to bring two floating hotels into waters of the State.
Citing ecological and environmental damage that the two projects might bring, Saldanha, reacting to comments of MPT chairman P Mara Pandiyan, who announced these plans, said the State’s waterways were not the private fiefdom of the MPT. “It appears that the MPT is only interested in revenue generation for itself and not
bothered about the ecological and environmental damage such projects may cause to the State or its people,” Saldanha said in a statement released to the Press. MPT chairman Pandiyan had announced that the Port Trust had received two proposals to set up floating hotels in the Zuari river, at whose mouth the Mormugao Port is located 35 kms by road from here.
“We have received two proposals to start floating hotels at the Mormugao port. As per the proposal received from some private parties, each floating hotel will roughly house 400 guests,” Pandiyan had said. Saldanha, who succeeded her late husband Matanhy as Minister of Enviroment and Forests, said that the MPT chairman’s statements which said that the proposers of the floating hotel projects would be allowed to decide where they want to anchor the floating hotels in the Zuari river, was irresponsible.
The Goa Government has opposed two floating hotel projects, being pushed by the MPT, a Central Government undertaking, claiming that the projects would cause “ecological and environment” damage. In an official statement on Wednesday, the Minister for Environment and Forests has also accused the MPT, which runs Goa’s only major port, of being “colonial” and has asked it to stop using Goa’s rivers as its “private fiefdom”.
“MPT continues to exercise the powers which were entrusted to it during the colonial period. MPT should not be allowed to treat the rivers and inland/coastal waters of Goa as its private fiefdom leasing acres of water to various parties,” she said. Saldanha also hit out at the MPT for signing two memoranda of understanding with private agencies to set up marinas in the Zuari river, despite the region being rich in biodiversity and without studying the ecological impact.
“The areas proposed for the marina projects are very rich in biodiversity but for MPT it is only an area of water which can be leased out for income generation regardless of the costs to people, their livelihood, the environment and ecology,” she said. Goa's other major river, the Mandovi, already has six offshore casinos anchored in it. The Goa Government and the MPT have not been able to see eye to eye, with sparring over the decades over issues of encroachment, land and seaward jurisdiction and pollution caused by the coal and iron ore handling operations of the port.