Digambar scraps all SEZs
Sandesh
Prabhudesai
31 December 2007
Chief minister Digambar
Kamat today decided to get three special economic zones denotified and scrap the
rest 12 pending proposals for Goa.
The decision was taken at a ministerial
sub-committee meeting held today afternoon.
The scrapped SEZs also include
four proposals, which were approved by the union ministry of commerce.
Except
the three SEZs, which were notified, the state government had put all the proposals
on hold earlier, following people's agitations led by political parties, NGOs
and the concerned village action committees.
The state government was also
compelled to stop the ongoing work of the three notified SEZs after the peoples'
movement was intensified.
These three notified SEZs are pharmaceutical unit
of Meditab Specialities Pvt Ltd at Keri, bio-tech unit of Peninsula Pharma Research
Pvt Ltd at Sancoale and IT unit of K Raheja Corp Pvt Ltd at Verna.
Prior
to the ministerial sub-committee meeting, Mr Kamat consulted all the different
organisations agitating against the SEZ for three months.
It included the
opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, the United Goans Democratic Party, the Maharashtrawadi
Gomantak Party, the church-led SEZ Virodhi Manch, the SEZ Virodhi Abhiyan, the
Youth Goa as well as the left parties like CPI and CPM.
The Goa Pradesh
Congress Committee had also recently demanded scrapping of all the SEZs.
The
Task Force constituted to formulate Regional Plan 2021 also strongly recommended
scrapping of the SEZ, stating that even a single SEZ would be detrimental to the
state.
This is a second victory of the people of Goa within one year, after
getting the Regional Plan 2011 getting scrapped in January. The year ended with
both the anti-Goa proposals getting scrapped.
Your
Comments Please
