Villagers protest Essar Steel's dredging work

Hundreds of villagers under the banner of Gramya Suraksha Samiti and Paradip Krushak Mancha today protested the dredging work of Essar Steel in Mahanadi river near Paradip. They were agitating over non-fulfillment of their demands. The agitation affected the sand filling work of the land acquired by the company for setting up of a six million tonne steel plant.

Villagers alleged that Essar Steel was trying to purchase private land for the project at lesser price using land mafias and ignoring the claims of the affected villagers for higher compensation. Besides they accused the company of violating costal regulation zone (CRZ) act, causing soil erosion, giving preference to outsiders in employment and harassing contract lanours engaged in construction work.

Bhagban Swain, secretary of Paradip Krushak Mancha said, the company is dredging the shore line of the river in stead of its middle portion which has resulted in the river ingressing into the agricultural land on the river bank.

Farmers are unable to cultivate paddy as the saline water has submerged their land. The company is yet to give compensation to the affected farmers, he complained.  

Hence, the villagers today marched to the site where the company is conducting the dredging and stopped the work demanding payment of compensation.

Earlier, the villagers had protested the dredging work on three occasions following which the Essar Steel authority and district administration hadgiven assurance to conduct survey about the soil erosion and damage suffered by the farmers by technical experts. But later nothing happened and ignoring the demands of the affected people, the company restarted the dredging work on Mahandai river. In protest, the irate villagers stopped the dredging work on Thursday. 

President of Gramya Suraksha Samiti, Tofan Swain said, the organisation would hold an awareness meeting at Bhubaneswar on November 7 to highlight the plight of the villagers. On the other hand, Kujang tahsildar Basudev Pradhan said, thenecessary permission for dredging has been given by the Cuttack division of Irrigation Department of the state government.

When contacted a company official said, there was the dredging is being done with required permission and there was no violation of the CRZ act as the project site did not come the CRZ area.