Friday 29 March 2024

News Analysed, Opinions Expressed

Economy | Industry

'No Commission, scrap Meta Strips'

 

Scrapping the controversial Meta Strips project is becoming a prime demand in Goa, rejecting the one-man Sindkar Commission enquiry which is yet to begin its work.

Overlooking the violent people's movement emerging in the tourist state while the season has just begun, the Congress government however maintains that it would scrap the project only if the commission finds it to be a pollutant one.

Meanwhile, the Meta Strips Ltd is in a fix with Goa Foundation - the environmental group - releasing another EIA, countering the company's EIA conducted by Swiss-based SGS Ltd. It proves how the project would ruin life of the surrounding villages.

Based on the EIA prepared by internationally recognised Metallurgical and Engineering Consultants (MECON), Goa Foundation has demanded that the project be classified as 'dirty industry' as it promotes transfer of hazardous waste and scrap here from OECD countries.

The 17-page report primarily observes that the project, situated near the port town of Vasco as well as the Dabolim air port in South Goa, would generate toxic air pollution waste water and large quantities of solid waste.

"Why should be India converted into a ragpicker to collect waste and scrap from the European countries", asks Dr Claude Alvares of Goa Foundation, while also suggesting that even the waste should have been exported along with the finished product.

Khaitan of Meta Strips, which intends to manufacture brass strips and foils by importing the scrap from other countries, claims that he had conducted the rapid EIA though the law does not demand it. "The report rules out any pollution or health hazard", he says.

According to Khaitan, it is a secondary metallurgical unit that uses the melting process to produce brass strips and foils. Even the state pollution control board cleared it without the EIA because it does not fall under schedule 1 of the Environment Protection Rules, 1986.

Industries minister Churchill Alemao, on the other hand, is simply bothered about the annual revenue of Rs 22 crore and 1000 jobs it would lose rather than the pollution threat. "Because Goans pushed out Nylon 6,6 project, we lost revenue of Rs 55 crore and 2000 jobs", he recalls, justifying setting up of pollutant projects in the tourist state.

"I am prepared to scrap it. But let the Sindkar commission tell me that", says chief minister Luizinho Faleiro. The project was approved by the government during his tenure as the industries minister two years ago, without even taking the proposal to the high power co-ordination committee.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, main opposition in the Assembly, has also however rejected the Sindkar commission along with fighting villagers and environmental groups, while demanding that the probe be conducted by an authority approved by the central government and selected by the fighting villagers.

Dr Alvares is in fact planning to raise objection on the first day of the commission's hearing that Justice Sindkar has no technical expertise to probe into the pollution angle of the project. "Even the supreme court orders have said in the past that judges are not experts to go into technical matters", he points out.

The Church, which is spearheading the agitation, has dismissed any enquiry and insists that the project be scrapped because it violates the human rights of the locals. "Any such commission ultimately favours the industrialists and the government", quips Fr Carmo Noronha, the Church spokesman.


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