PARADIP: Hundreds of villagers of Handia under the banner of Gramya Surkhya Samiti staged dharna in front of Essar plant to press their nine-point charter of demands on Tuesday. The protestors alleged that though 10 years have passed since a notification was issued by the district administration, development activities are yet to be carried out in Handia.
Moreover, villagers are yet to be provided jobs as promised by Essar Steel authorities, they said. Essar Steel, which is currently setting up a 12 million tonne (MT) pellet plant in Paradip and also plans to upgrade it’s capacity to a whopping 24 MT per annum in future, had decided to set up an Integrated Steel Plant (ISP) with a production capacity of six MT per annum at the same location.
Essar Steel had approached the State Government for 394 acres of land at Handia village under Kujang tehsil for setting up its ISP plant. Subsequently, the administration served notices to nearly 80 families of Handia village for their displacement in 2008.
While authorities of Essar Steel assured to provide job to one member from each of the 80 families, development activities in the village were stopped as there was a proposal to resettle the villagers.
However, the villagers opposed the administration’s decision to stop development activities in the area following which it was decided to provide health services, drinking water facilities and proper roads in Handia till the proposed plant was established.
The protestors said housing scheme, drinking water and toilet facilities under Government schemes are not being implemented in Handia and Corporate Social Responsibility activities are also not being carried out in the village since 2008. On the other hand, Essar Steel has informed the district administration that the proposal to set up the ISP in Paradip has been cancelled under a modified plan and hence, there was no need to resettle villagers from Handia.
Dharanidhar Swain, an agitating member of the Gramya Surakhya Samiti, said villagers of Handia are living in miserable condition due to neglect by district administration and Essar Steel authorities.
Their demands include provision of jobs to unemployed youths who have been undergone training of Essar, rehabilitation of villagers as per R&R policy, employment opportunities for degree and diploma engineers and hike in remuneration of workers engaged in the company, Swain added.
Later in the day, Sub-Collector Subash Chandra Nath Sharma along with police officials rushed to the spot and assured the agitators that their issues will be addressed after holding discussion with Essar authorities on on March 5. Later, the protest was withdrawn.