KOCHI: The Geotube project, launched with much fanfare at Chellanam, is yet to take off the ground. With the threat of sea erosions looming large, the snail's pace of the project is causing dilemma among the residents of Chellanam and nearby areas.
According to Fr John Kandathiparambil, who has been at the forefront of the movement seeking help for the fisherfolk, the entire project is at present in a big muddle. "The person who had taken up the contract to lay the geotube subcontracted it to another person who then appointed another subcontractor. Neither the contractor nor the subcontractors owned any piece of machinery required to carry out the work," he said. The company which manufactures the geotube had instructed that the tubes, which measure 25 metres in length and five metres in diameter, can be filled to its capacity only with the help of a 180 hp dredger, he added.
"But the contractors came in with an 80 hp motor and ended up taking a lot of time to fill the tubes. It only takes six hours to pack the tubes with the sand if a dredger is used," he said. According to him, the contractors started the work without any planning. "The contractors were supposed to fill the tubes with sand procured from elsewhere. However, they began mining it from the sand bars that had been acting as a second barrier against the sea after the stone walls," he said.
It is a mess, he said. "They have dug up a huge trench along the coast. And instead of saving the sand they had dug up, the workers dumped it into the sea. Now they are blaming unavailability of sand for the delay in the work. It is said around 180 loads of sand is required to fill a geotube," he added. Around 140 geotubes are needed to create an efficient sea wall. "The work which was going on at a snail's pace at Velankanni Bazaar stopped completely during the elections. Well, they are blaming elections but the reason might be something else," said Varghese P, a fisherman. According to him, when the monsoon arrives this year, the area will have to struggle with flooding on a big scale. “Soil erosion has always been a problem. We have been agitating and making representations to the authorities for quite long. But the situation is yet to be rectified," said Raju, another resident of Chellanam.
Meanwhile, the contractor Mohammed Niyas cites unavailability of compact sand as the reason. According to Shakeel K P, supervisor of Mohammed Niyas, if compact sand is made available today, they will finish the work before the monsoon. "We had been instructed to mine sand from the sea bed. But the tests that had been conducted using a vibrocorer, revealed that only two metres of sand were available under the sea bed. This is not enough. We need around 60,000 cubic metres of sand to fill the tubes," he said.
According to him, the availability of sand went down in the areas along the coast of Chellanam due to the dumping of dredging slurry. "Dredging activity goes in 365 days to keep the shipping channel navigatable. As per rules, the slurry has to be deposited 25 km away from the dredging site. Chellanam falls outside the 25 km," he said. So the sea bed near the Chellanam coast is full of silt and clay, he added.
However, there is a large deposit of sand in the harbour, he said. "If we are allowed to use this sand we will be able to complete the project, even though it will be an added financial burden for us," he said. But departmental issues have closed this door too, he added.