Two years after construction works commenced for the Mumbai Coastal Road project, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Wednesday invited tenders to conduct a comprehensive survey to scritunise the loss of the fisherfolk community, affected due to the project.
The BMC is supposed to reclaim 90 hectares of the sea that has already led to immense inconvenience to the fisherfolk community.
Speaking to the Free Press Journal, a senior BMC official of the coastal road project informed the tender is for appointing consultants who would be analysing the loss of the fisher folks.
"The consultants will scrutinise the documents of the fisherfolks and analyse if the coastal road project would cause them any loss, following which the consultants would submit their report to the BMC which will take the final call" the official told FPJ.
The official also pointed out that the BMC would not provide any rehabilitation to the fisherfolks as the civic body is not reclaiming any personal property.
"Rehabilitation is offered if private property of anyone is being reclaimed, here we are not reclaiming anyone’s property so there's no point of rehabilitating anyone" the official added.
Meanwhile, environmentalists have criticised this new tender of the civic body labelling the project to be poorly planned. Environmentalist and Green activist, Debi Goenka stated if BMC sought an Environment Impact Assesment (EIA) clearance earlier then the authorities would have asked them for these reports then only.
"The BMC has not applied for environment clearance, they have only got clearance under the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) and this move of the BMC clearly points out the loopholes in these projects" Goenka told FPJ. He further mentioned that having an EIA clearance is important in order to complete the project.
