the goan I network
PANAJI
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant told the Goa legislative assembly that e-auction of already mined iron ore lying unused in mines and at jetties will begin in the next 20 days and handling of dumps will start in Goa within six months.
Sawant made the statement following a Zero Hour mention by Mayem MLA Pravin Zantye who demanded fast-tracking of resumption of mining as thousands of workers had been terminated and many more are facing the axe.
Several other members, including Pratapsing Rane, Luizinho Faleiro and Aleixo Reginald Lourenco demanded a special half-hour discussion on the issue and Sawant said it would come up through the next 20 days in the course of the monsoon session.
Sawant also said that Union Home Minister Amit Shah had formed a group of ministers with whom he, the Advocate General and top bureaucrats from Goa had a meeting in Delhi last week where at least three options on how to restart legal mining were discussed.
He said, the Centre had taken up the issue seriously and Union ministers for Finance, Environment, Mining, Commerce, Law among
others have been roped into the Group of Ministers to resolve it.
Another meeting with the Group of Ministers is slated for this week again where he said the path to resolution to the logjam would emerge.
“Dump mining will start in six months. At least mining activity will start,” Sawant said, while insisting that it was a priority for the government to revive the sector.
Mining had come to a grinding halt in March 2018 after the Supreme court imposed a ban on both extraction and transportation of ore after it declared the 2014-15 renewal of 88 mining leases illegal and cancelled them.
