PANAJI
Chairman of the Goa Tourism Development Corporation Nilesh Cabral has said that all options are open for the development of the Kesarval spring, even as he asserted villagers had misunderstood the plans of the Corporation.
Speaking to The Goan, Cabral who was responding to opposition by villagers of Quelossim denied that the spring was being privatized or that its access to locals would be restricted.
“The hotel project and the spring are totally different. It was only that we had said that the winning bidder who operates the hotel would have to maintain the spring as part of the CSR activity,” Cabral said.
“Today, the spring is in bad shape and to bring it back to its original form and keep it that way maintenance will have to be done,” he added.
He said that he would not have a problem in asking the hotel not to maintain the spring, and instead hand it over to the village panchayat or a committee selected by the villagers to maintain it. “No one wants to do this. Why was the spring abandoned for the last ten years?” Cabral asked.
“Let the party selected for maintaining the spring charge a nominal fee of five or ten rupees and the same could be used to pay some workers to maintain the spring,” Cabral said.
The villagers have also taken offence to the plans of the GTDC to ‘purify’ the water of the spring. On this, Cabral said the water quality of the spring and several of its parameters were poor.
“Right now the water is reduced to a trickle. We want to bring a hydrologist on board to study the aquifers and the flow of the water and accordingly improve the spring. We also wanted to install a system that would purify the water to ensure that it is safe for people to consume,” Cabral said.
