Towering infernos

It’s been five years since the rogue mobile phone tower cameup at House No B249 at Betim. The children of a primary school less than fiftymetres away are oblivious of the fact that the tower is illegal and should nothave been there. The reason? It does not have statutory permissions.

“We have brought the matter to the notice of authorities butnobody is acting despite constant reminders”, says local resident LawrenceLobo. Like Lobo, scores of people are worried that the fifty metre high towersjutting out of the illegal structures built on Survey No. 62/5 of Reis Magosvillage have escaped the attention of authorities as they lie cleverlyconcealed amongst coconut palms. But Betim’s plight is worse than anywhere elsein Goa.

The Reis Magos Panchayat, which is the regulatory body forany kind of permission for any structure has as early as February 2009 issuednotices to the owners of the house that the structure is illegal but they havedefied the strictures. Last year in August, Pundalik Khorjuvekar, Mamlatdar(Mapusa) in his report had informed Deputy Collector, Bardez that the mobilephone tower “is an illegal installation of tower on illegal residentialstructure”. The very structure on which the mobile tower has been built hasalso been found to violate CRZ rules.

“It has been five months since the Deputy Collector’s Officeitself confirmed not only CRZ violations but also violations of Goa PanchayatRaj Act rules, yet nobody is in a hurry to act”, explains Lobo. Residents ofthe locality wonder why the rogue operation has not stopped first pendingaction. It is business as usual for the mobile phone tower company operatingand earning as well as the owners of the illegal structures, while others areworried at the level of radiation. 

Concerns against radiation from mobile phone towers arenothing new to Goa. Last May, residents of Saligao had joined hands to blockthe installation of a mobile tower in a residential area. The mobile tower wasbeing installed in a busy locality despite objections from residents citingradiation levels but of no avail. The villagers while reiterating that theywere not against mobile towers, wanted them about 500 mtrs away fromresidential areas.

Earlier, Salcette was rocked by a spate of protests againstproposals to erect mobile phone towers as greedy Panchayats and property ownerswould join hands to put up a mobile tower despite taking into consideration theconcerns of the neighbours and locals. It started with protests from residentsof Navelim after a cellular company erected a tower on a multi-storey building.But the matter got a reprieve due to statutory tangles. Thereafter Cuncolim sawhundreds of students taking to the streets in protest against the erection of atower close to their school building. The Council failed to act. Maddelresidents rose up next against the proposed construction of a tower in theirneighbourhood that year "Critical questions concerning the health effectsand safety of the radiofrequency (RF) electromagnetic radiation exists and theauthorities have issued the permission without taking these aspects intoaccount", stated Savio Dias, President of the Madel Social WelfareCommittee (MSWC) in a letter to the District Collector.

Last September, Department of Telecommunication, Governmentof India has released a stringent set of norms that it states “The EMF exposurelimit (Base Station Emissions) is lowered to 1/10th of the existing ICNIRPexposure level effective from September 1, 2012. Indian standards are now 10times more stringent than more than 90% countries in the world”. The questionis whether all the towers in Goa have been evaluated for confirming to newradiation levels and have received certification for the same. Have the mobileoperators changed their equipment to maintain constant levels of radiation inconformity to the new prescribed levels in your neighbourhood?

Write to us at iamthegoan@thegoan.net with your views andobservation as a global report last month has debunked even the new norms andhas given us a wakeup call to the new menace?