Divar is the only island in Tiswadi Taluka, that is not connected by a bridge. This helps it cut off from the busy city life. This also stops builders and large investors to start urbanising the island and build large complexes with apartments and villas. Villagers in Divar are fighting for the island as more efforts try to build a bridge to connect the island. Not only the bridge, but there have been attempts to build apartments and buildings in the island too. These have all been resisted and restrained by the voice of the villagers. Although in the recent years, this has not been easy. This brings me to the main topic of this blog.
It all started Mid January 2020. A PWD contractor started cleaning an orchard property behind the Our Lady of Agonizantes Chapel, Amboi Ward; Cutting some trees in the property and burning the grass. Because of this, the rain water collection pipes on the roof of the chapel caught fire which could have lead to something more serious. This brought light to the situation. It was found out that there was a new road being built. Now this was new news to everybody. After approaching the Local Authorities about this, they denied knowing anything about the road since their comity was newly elected.
The first step to find out what was happening, was to check if the Contractor had a legal work order to carry out his work. He did not have a work order. At this point, the Parish Priest was informed since part of the road belonged to the Chapel Property and the plan was suggested by the chapel.
Now, a few villagers began an investigation. First they checked the survey numbers of the chapel and the orchard property which were 95/9 and 96/1 respectively. The property belonged to Babuso. This is where the jigsaw pieces of the puzzle came together.
On 21st January, the villagers in concern asked the P.W.D to issue a stop work notice. An Engineer came to investigate the site and the issue going on. After reading the files and documents, it was revealed that the proposal of the road had come from the chapel. The chapel does not have it’s own comity so it is overseen by the church. The Confraria Comity of the St.Mathias Church.
These documents were likely forged documents, which means they were fabricated in the name of the chapel. After a little more research about the forged documents, a certain villager found that the image used in the documents to represent the chapel was not even the chapel in concern. It was the Elvis Presley Church in Arizona. This proved this could be fake, although they could not find any proof about the signature being fake. The documents were highly suspicious.
This Project was passed in 2016 by the previous Panchayat body. Another suspicious thing about the letter here was that the letter had no date.
The proposal from the chapel stated “Beautification of the chapel.” In the name of this fallacy, the road would lead to the contractor; benefiting his own uses. (Babuso secret reveal)
On investigation, it was found that the property wanted to be used to build a building or some development. To acquire such a property, there has to be a tar road. Hence, to reach the orchard property, the tar road was needed.
The next step from the Villagers and the Parish Priest was to pass a resolution, stating that they did not want the the road. This was achieved by taking permission from the villagers and then sent to the PWD authorities.
An engineer appeared on site. Although this time it was a different engineer than the one who checked the property initially. She was the Executive Engineer of Division 2. After noticing the irregularities and objections by the villagers she promised to scrap the project.
Then this work order collided with the elections which did not allow him to start the work.
However, In January 2020, they started the work again without an extension of the previous work order that had probably expired which itself is a violation. The reply was that he had assumed he would get a work order.
After this, it all settled down.
Suddenly, the opinion of the Executive Engineer had changed. She stated that the project cannot be closed. It can now be assumed by this sudden change that she is under pressure.
Ideally, they had to scrap the project because the community has not given the permission and the documents attached to the proposal looked suspicious.
Another aspect to consider was that the road would come over partly the chapel property and the complidade property. For the chapel side, they had a fake approval as mentioned earlier but there is no approval from complidade.
The P.W.D is at fault here. How did they pass the work order?
After that the Executive Engineer comes to the site. This time she promises to scrap the project and from there she leaves it in the governments hands with a very vague and non-forthcoming attitude.
This is an ongoing issue and this is as much as I can share in this post. I hope to make a part 2 soon, to cover the rest of this topic.