Dabolim Airport requires bigger passenger terminus
HERALD NEWS DESK PANJIM, OCT 28 Shantaram Naik, MP has demanded that Dabolim airport should have a bigger Integrated Passenger Terminus than the one planned. In a statement issued today, Naik says that daily traffic at the airport being around 4000, Dabolim should have a passenger terminus for catering at least 3000 passengers, if on account of constraint of land availability, a bigger terminus cannot be constructed. Naik said that he has been consistently arguing in the MOPA Committee that the Indian Navy have to produce the title documents of the land occupied by them at Dabolim including the land transferred by them to the Airport Authority. Naik said that it is not that he does not realise the Defence needs but that it is not fair that Navy should make the Goa Government and the Airport Authority to go with a begging bawl to the Navy asking for land when the land actually belongs to the Government of Goa, and that, the Navy has not produced any Deed of Transfer of the said land in their favour nor there is, to my knowledge, any such deed in the records of the Government of Goa. Naik said the officials of the Goa Government who were present during the first meeting of MOPA committee has assured him to investigate into the title of the land and submit the information before the committee. Naik said that it is only because in the last meeting when ICAO experts, who had earlier given a feasibility report regarding MOPA airport attended the meeting that he (Naik) had asked him a question whether he had taken into consideration existence of Dabolim Airport while giving the feasibility reports regarding the proposed MOPA airport, the expert said that he had not taken that aspect into consideration and that if the Committee wants to know about the feasibility of MOPA in the light of existing airport, a fresh study will have to be made. Naik further said since the term of MOPA committee has been extended up to October 31, 2007, a meeting of MOPA Committee is expected to be held soon. http://oheraldo.in/pagedetails.asp?nid=3525&cid=26 Sanny de Quepem <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com