Out of 190 Goan panchayats, 140 have passed resolution against shipping corridor to "help" corporates

By A Representative
The National Fishworkers’ Forum (NFF) has said that the Sagarmala project and its impacts on local communities are going to be huge. Port advancements, connecting it to industries, and creating coastal economic zones will only alienate the fisherpeople and handover the natural resources in the hands of corporates, Olencio Simmoes of NFF said at Panjim, Goa, while addressing participants of the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM)-sponsored Samvidhan Samman Yatra.
Simmoes said, “Six rivers in Goa are proposed to be nationalised, under National Waterways Act, and thus Goa will lose 184 Kms of its rivers to corporates and their greed. Plans are afoot to build shipping corridors where fishing will be restricted for local communities. It is only to benefit private players.”
He informed the participants in the yatra, “Out of 190 Panchayats, almost 140 Panchayats have already passed resolution against this. In the name of autonomy to ports, land grabbing is being facilitated to private players. The port is already privatized and almost being run by Adani, Jindal and Vedanta. There are clear violations of Coastal Zone Regulation. Nitin Gadkari, minister in Cabinet said that the ports are green projects, thus they don’t require environmental clearance. Sagarmala is going to be the biggest environmental destruction and it will destroy Goa.”

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