PANAJI
In September of 2019, when four young boys barely in their teens had their lives snuffed out when they tragically drowned in Tuem-Pernem, it was a wake up call for the State government: abandoned laterite stone quarries when monsoons hit turn into watery graves and need to be dealt with.
The State government did seem to have taken it seriously and Chief Minister Pramod Sawant while expressing grief over the loss of the four young lives, gave express instructions to the authorities concerned to seal such quarries.
This is what Sawant had tweeted on the day of the incident barely six months into his first innings as chief minister: "Deeply pained by the loss of lives of students by drowning at Tuem. We should ensure that our children are made aware of the dangers posed by such misadventures in order to prevent such tragedies. I have also directed the authorities to identify and cordon off such areas."
However, more than five years later, Sawant is more than two years into his second innings, several more people have died drowning in quarries but on ground zero nothing gets done vis-a-vis cordoning off these sites.
Even the National Green Tribunal's indictment about six months later in which it directed the Goa government to pay Rs 16 lakh to each of the victims' families
and to recover the money from operators of such illegal stone quarries in Goa has failed to get the administration moving.
According to a senior geologist from the Department of Mines and Geology, the enormity of the task to seal or fence these inactive laterite stone quarries is the main hurdle preventing any physical action on the ground.
"There are over 100 such sites. High costs and lack of clarity as to who will bear the cost of the work is perhaps why nothing has been done," the geologist said.
Before the NGT, the Goa government a year after the Tuem tragedy, had pledged to ensure the quarries are filled up with fly ash and remediated inert waste and restored through the Goa State Biodiversity Board.
The proposal put down in writing by the State government envisaged using the waste (fly ash and slag) produced by induction furnace units and also sponge iron units to restore the quarries to its original state.
The last one metre on the surface it was planned would be soil and compost so either the Goa State Biodiversity Board or the Forest Department could then take up plantation there.
However, four years later, that plan too remains solely on paper even as the hazardous slag and fly-ash continue to pile up in industrial estates, particularly in Cuncolim.
Leader of the Opposition, Yuri Alemao, who has been vocal against the environmental damage caused by the hazardous units at the Cuncuolim industrial estate said, the plan presented to the NGT appears to be good but the government lacks intent to execute it.
Costs of carrying out this massive plan have also not been budgeted for by the government, he added.
