MARGAO
While PWD officials and the contractor concerned maintain that hill-cutting work for extraction of earth for building the Western bypass embankment is being taken up with due permissions, Senior Town planner, Margao, has said that his office has not granted any permission for extraction of the earth.This revelation has thrown up several questions, more important one being from where does the contractor procure tons of earth for filling of land.That s not all. With complaints galore of hill-cuttings and earth extractions at many places across Salcete taluka, the Senior Town Planner James Mathew has sounded a note of caution to the PWD top officials not to do anything unlawful and earn the ire of local residents.The STP has further point blank made it clear to the PWD officials that it cannot take shelter under a 2011 circular to resort to hill cuttings to procure mud for the project.This is the second letter that Mathew has dashed off to the PWD Executive Engineer, R Kamat, making it very clear that though the Western bypass project is of national importance, the authorities just simply cannot bypass the provisions of the law vis-Ã -vis hill cutting and filling of land.The TCP s letter to the PWD Executive Engineer assumes significance as the PWD had all along maintained that all appropriate formalities under the purview of Section 17-A of the Town and Country Planning Act are completed through the office of the office of the Senior Town Planner, Town and Country Planning department. “This statement is not true as this office has not granted any permission for cutting and extraction of earth in connection with the Western bypass,” Mathew told the PWD.The Senior Town Planner has asserted that the 2011 circular that speaks of exemption in seeking permission for hill cutting to excavate mud for filling of land for the purpose of construction of road doesn t apply in this case. He explained to make his point clear, “The filling work in the case of Western bypass may fall under the exemption clause of the circular. However, cutting of hilly land for extraction of earth from elsewhere and away from the alignment of the road doesn t fall under the exemptions specified in the circular,” Mathew said.Mathew s letter to the PWD raises an important question as to how and from where the contractor is procuring truck loads of earth. TCP officials said that the PWD and the contractor are required to seek permission from the Mines Department for extraction of earth. Secondly, they asserted that the PWD or the contractor should keep the TCP posted with proper documentation regarding the sites used for extraction though permission is not required where the gradient is less than 1:10. Around 3.5 lakh truck loads of earth will be required for the Western bypass to build embankments along the 11-km route which starts from from Verna and cuts through Nuvem, Seraulim, Mungul, Benaulim, Navelim, Telaulim and Dramapur.
