BY RAJAN NARAYAN

The MPT Chairman Praveen Agarwal’s development projects spell doom for Mormugao. It will not only lead to wholesale privatisation of public resources but convert MPT into the most polluting cargo port in the country.

IF IT was Babush Monster Rat who sought to concretise Goa through the diabolical Regional Plan 2011 and Aleixo Sequeira and Pratapsingh Rane who sought to gift away large areas of land to land sharks masquerading as promoters of special economic zones, Praveen Agarwal, the chairman of the Mormugao Port Trust, has the dubious distinction of not only having blackened the faces and lungs and roads of Vasco with coal dust, he has also been responsible for privatising public utilities for the benefit of bhaile industrialists. In his megalomaniacal obsession with expanding the port and making it more profitable to impress his political bosses at the Centre, the Chairman of the MPT has been encroaching on land belonging to traditional fishermen and increasing the exposure of not only the port city but the entire Mormugao taluka to the consequences of the MPT becoming the principal entry point for dusty cargo — or should it be dirty cargo?

The primary source of the pollution in densely populated Vasco city and the neighbouring areas like Chicalim and Cortalim is pollution caused by the increasing amounts of coal that is imported through the Mormugao Port to meet the requirements of the Jindal Aluminium and Steel Plants located in Vijaynagar in Karnataka. In the face of vehement protests from the residents of Vasco reeling under the dust pollution caused by the dirty cargo over several years, the MPT had promised that when the berth 5 A and 6 A which are mechanised dedicated coal handling facilities for the Jindal group, the handling of coal at berth No. 10 and 11 would be stopped. But, contrary to the promise made by successive chairmen of the MPT, even after the commissioning of berth 5 A and 6 A, coal continues to be manually handled at berth 10 and 11.

EXPANSION

Praveen Agarwal’s ambitions to expand the operations of the MPT and its profitability at the expense of the residents of Murmagoa taluka is expected to make the situation much worse. The MPT has entered into a partnership agreement with Adani to develop additional coal handling facilities at the Mormugao Port Trust. The Monster Rat of Mormugao, Praveen Agarwal, has been boasting that with the implementation of the Adani Mormugao Port Terminal, the capacity of the Mormugao Port to handle dirty, dusty cargo — principally coal — will go up from 5.5 million tonnes annually to 10.10 million tonnes. The steep augmentation of the capacity to handle coal imports is intended not for the benefit of Goans or Goa, but to meet the coal requirements of mega thermal plants coming up in the west coast and in Karnataka.

DIRTY CARGO

TWO more additional berths are being developed, ostensibly for handling the huge volumes of ore from the Bellary and Hospet mines which are even greater than the volume of Goan ore exported through the Mormugao Port. But the suspicion is that the additional berths will also be diverted for handling the increased imports of coal. This is because the demand for imported coal will go up steeply following the decision of the Karnataka government to acquire and allot 4800 acres of land in Bellary district for the six million tonne steel plant proposed to be put up by Arcelor Mittal group. Besides the Mittal steel plant, the National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) is also planning to put up a steel plant in the Hospet-Bellary mining area. Which means that the demand for coal, which is an essential ingredient in the manufacture of steel, will go up even more inexorably, converting the Mormugao port into an exclusive dirty, dusty cargo port.

The Mormugao Bachao Abhiyan has been agitating against the menace of coal pollution for more than eight years. Coal meant for the Vijaynagar Steel Plant of the Jindals in Karnataka and other units outside the state is imported though the Mormugao Port. Less than ten percent of the coal imported through the Mormugao Port is meant for use by Goan industrial units with 90 percent being imported for the benefit of industrial units outside the state. As far back as in 2003, the then BJP MLA Rajendra Arlekar had raised a calling attention motion in the Assembly over coal pollution in Vasco. Then chief minister Manohar Parrikar had issued a six week deadline in April 2003 to the MPT to take all necessary steps to safeguard the health and interest of the people of the port town.

NO MEASURES

BUT of course nothing happened and the Mormugao Port Authorities did not put in place any of the anti pollution measures necessary to prevent not just discomfort, but severe threat to the health of the densely populated Vasco city and the neighbouring areas. In March 2004, the central government issued a notification directing ports to levy a penalty on storage of dirty cargo. The levy was imposed to put in place pollution control systems on the principle that the polluter should pay. But the penalties were seldom imposed and coal continues to be stacked in the open and even the minimal pollution control measures specified during the transport of coal have neither been implemented nor enforced.

This despite the fact that the Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB)has repeatedly pulled up the MPT for failing to implement pollution control measures to minimise if not eliminate pollution caused by the import, storage and transport of imported coal. As far back as in July 2005, the member secretary of the GSPCB had issued a directive stating that the coal imported through the Mormugao port should be transported only by rail and there should be no road transport of coal by trucks. In March 2006, then chairman of the GSPCB, Dr L U Joshi, had directed the MPT to stop manual handling of coal at berth no 10 and 11. Joshi had asked the port authorities to fix tall masks with water sprinklers to sprinkle water on the coal dumps at the Mormugao Port Trust. It was also stipulated that the stacks of coal should not exceed six metres. Elaborate directions were also issued with respect to transport of coal. It was mandated that trucks carrying coal should be fully covered with tarpolene so that no coal particles fell on the road. The truck operators were even asked to clean the truck tyres before the loaded trucks left the port area. Needless to say, none of the directives issued by the GSPCB were implemented by the MPT and the other agencies involved in the import of coal through the MPT.

The Mormugao Port Users Association commissioned the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) to monitor dust pollution due to cargo handling or material transfer operations at berth no 10 and 11 of MPT and asses its impact on surrounding areas, particularly in Vasco. NEERI ‘s report, submitted in June 2008, is a comprehensive indictment of the MPT and its lies and evasion over claims that it had put in place adequate safeguards against coal pollution.

NEERI INDICTMENT

THE NEERI study concluded that the pollution levels were much higher than the permissible norms. Ironically, even at the monitoring station established at the MPT institute, which is a club meant for senior MPT officers in the MPT housing complex, NEERI discovered that pollution levels were 71 units above permissible levels. In all six of the monitoring stations set up by NEERI, including the Laxmi Temple and Mercy High School, pollution levels in excess of the permissible norms ranged from 50 to 100 percent above the safety norms. The study concluded that the concentration of polluting particles in the air in Vasco exceeded the standards even for industrial zones at berth no 10 and 11 of the MPT as well as for residential zones in several areas of Vasco city.

NEERI, in its report, pointed out that the coal unloading operations were being done in the open and the poorly covered heaps of cargo generated a lot of coarse and fine particles which get air borne and pollute surrounding areas, particularly the port town of Vasco da Gama. The NEERI report observed that at MPT berths number 10 and 11 heaps of dusty cargo like coal and coke are stock piled on open MPT plots, much beyond MPT specified time for its removal. The evacuation rate described by MPT is not followed either in letter or in spirit. Plying of empty and loaded trucks on undeveloped vacant plots bypassing longer concrete roads worsens the pollution problem. The NEERI report indicted MPT of not even implementing its own lax and indulgent guidelines. The corollary being that, in its anxiety to attract business and make profits, the MPT had callously put health and welfare of the residents of Vasco and neighbouring areas at risk.

Nothing has changed despite MPT’s repeated claims that it has taken proactive steps to reduce coal pollution. The very fact that the MPT has earmarked only 0.5% of the total new investment of Rs.27,183 million to environmental management dramatises its obsession with profits to the detriment of the health and welfare of the residents of Vasco. Indeed, on a site visit to the MPT as recently as August 2009, the Minister for Environment and Forest, Jairam Ramesh, told the media that he was appalled by the huge open dumps near the berthing jetties at the MPT, a central government run enterprise.

NO OBJECTIONS

IN fact, Jairam Ramesh was so outraged that he promptly informed the Union Minister for Shipping and the Chief Minister and directed them to take necessary action. But neither the Union Shipping Ministry nor the Union of State Environment Ministers have taken any action to minimise or eliminate the coal pollution. What is even worse is that not even the MLAs from the Mormugao taluka, let alone the Chief Minister, have raised any objections or lodged any protests against Praveen Agarwal’s devious and unscrupulous plans to vastly expand the coal handling facilities at the MPT, even though this would worsen the pollution problems of Vasco and other neighbouring areas.

But the ambitions of the unscrupulous Praveen Agarwal are not limited to making the MPT the dirty cargo capital of the country. Agarwal has staked claim to ownership of vast areas of the coast stretching from Canacona to Pernem, much to the shock of both Goan MLAs and the Goan people. He has been seeking to evict the traditional fishermen from Khariwado to a distant location to expand the number of berths that would be dedicated to the import of polluting coal. There is even greater controversy over the plans of the MPT for large scale reclamation of the Vasco bay to construct berths for ships. The most controversial of these plans are the west of break water (WOB) projects, which envisage the reclamation of 1.60 lakh sq ms on the seaward side for a rig repair facility. The biggest project of them all is the Baina bay project, which would virtually create a new port and would involve the reclamation of another six lakh sq ms to accommodate a ship building yard, a container transship terminal and a berth for cruise ships. What Praveen Agarwal does not seem to understand is the ecological consequences of such large scale reclamation.

The problem is that the Goa government has failed to reign in the megalomaniacal plans of the Monster Rat of Mormugao, Praveen Agarwal. They have either been taken for a ride or more likely are in collusion with major private groups, which have been systematically privatising the public facilities at Mormugao port for their exclusive use in collusion with Praveen Agarwal. The greatest tragedy is that none of the developments proposed by Agarwal benefit Goa. On the contrary, they will only aggravate the problems of Vasco residents and neighbouring areas. Indeed, if Praveen Agarwal is not stopped, he may take over not just Vasco but the whole of Goa. The government of course cannot be expected to provide any relief. So it is for the citizens to compel the central and state governments to stop the expansion of coal unloading facilities at Mormugao at the MPT so that there is no further deterioration in the health and welfare of the residents of Mormugao taluka. And stop deputing officers of the Indian Revenue Service obsessed with profits unmindful of the welfare of the local population.