[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
DAM-L LS: PR: Maheshwar Affected Capture HUDCO Office (fwd)
This will be the last email for dam-l for today and I will send the rest
of the backlog by tomorrow evening.
cheers!
-Dianne Muray
DRWG
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
NARMADA BACHAO ANDOLAN
Jail Road, Mandleshwar,
District Khargone,Madhya Pradesh.
Tel: 07283-33162, 07290-22464,
E-mail:nobigdam@vsnl.com
Press note , Bhopal
4.10.2000
Hundreds of Maheshwar dam affected people capture HUDCO office at Bhopal
Officials agree to visit valley to appraise Maheshwar Project
Hundreds of people affected by the Maheshwar Hydroelectric Project
captured the HUDCO (Housing and Urban Development Corporation) office
in the Pariyavas Bhavan at Bhopal at 11.00 a.m. in the morning and
held it till the officers disclosed the status of the loan
application presented by the S.Kumars to HUDCO . The siege of the
office continued till 5.00 p.m. in the evening when the HUDCO
officers gave a written undertaking that no amount on the proposed
loan had been disbursed till date nor had the proposal been cleared.
They also gave a written consent to the demand of the NBA that a team
of senior officials will visit the area from the 1st to 4th November,
2000 and actually study the situation on the ground as part of their
main appraisal process, before any further processing of the loan
application.
Patlan mai, senior woman leader from Village Mardana said " Officials
and investors will have to bow before the strength of the people and
the truth of the issues. If the investment decisions are taken not on
paper but by actually visiting the villages, the dam will never be
built."
The offices in the complex were electrified as the protestors gave
slogans and sang songs in the office complex all through the day. The
HUDCO officials conceded that the Project promoters - the S.Kumars
have not been able to give them even a list of those to be affected
till date, nor have they responded to their various queries on the
rehabilitation and environmental aspects of the Project. Later, the
protestors went to the IFCI office in the same complex and questioned
the General Manager Mr. Rajora about the issues. The General Manager
promised to raise these issues at their Delhi office. The IFCI is the
lead bank for the Maheshwar Project and has already appraised the
Project without visiting the area.
The HUDCO is one of the public sector financial institutions that
have been approached by the S.Kumars - the Project promoters of the
controversial Maheshwar Hydroelectric Project being built on the
river Narmada, to invest into the Project. According to the Chairman
of the HUDCO, Mr. V. Suresh who was met by the activists of the
Narmada Bachao Andolan last month, HUDCO has been approached to put
in money for infrastructure construction for resettlement colonies.
The people of the Narmada valley expressed their complete outrage
that in the light of the fact that this Project will produce
prohibitively expensive electricity and that NO cultivable lands for
the rehabilitation of the affected people exists, the HUDCO should
even consider investing in the Project. The people made it clear that
in the absence of any possibility of providing cultivable land and
livelihoods, any infrastructure construction to support the creation
of "colonies" of affected people rendered unemployed after
submergence, is only a façade of rehabilitation and unacceptable to
them.
The people affected by the Maheshwar Project and their supporters all
over the country challenge the HUDCO, IFCI, IDBI, LIC, GIC, Punjab
Bank, SBI, Dena Bank and all other financial institutions that are
considering investment in the Project to establish that this Project
is in public interest, financially viable and that the rehabilitation
of the affected people and the land based restoration of the
livelihoods of the affected people is possible. They challenge them
to publicly disclose the appraisal process and the conditionalities
of the proposed investment. Failing this they intend to move charges
against the decision making officers of squandering public investment
and taking decisions on the basis of non transparent considerations
that are not in public interest.
It may be noted that in the last two months delegations of affected
people have met the highest officers of these institutions and
briefed them about the realities on the ground and the discrepancies
in what the S. Kumars and the state government have been saying. Now
the people are resolved that if the institutions still go ahead with
decisions to invest, they will institute a series of direct actions
against these decisions as well as seek legal redressal and the
fixing of personal responsibility on the officers taking these
disastrous decisions . As the first of the contemplated direct
actions, last fortnight, 400 farmers of the affected area who are
also policy holders of the LIC submitted letters to the LIC
threatening to withdraw their policies, totally amounting to Rs.1
crore if the LIC remained associated with this destructive Project.
In the next month, the farmers plan to intensify this consumer's
action on the LIC up to an amount of Rs. 30-40 crores.
It may be recalled that in the face of the determined struggle of the
affected people in the last 4 years, several power utilities from the
US and Germany, notably the Pac Gen, Bayernwerk and VEW Energie have
withdrawn from this Project. Moreover last month, with the Siemens
withdrawing its application for an export guarantee from the German
government , a Rs. 530 crore tied loan to the Maheshwar Project from
the private German bank- the HypoVereinsbank fell through .The
project promoters are now trying to raise the investment required for
this Project by patchworking funds from several public sector
financial and infrastructure institutions.
It is clear that the pressure of the state and Central governments on
the FI's to pump money into this dying project is not sound economics
or the protection of the interests of the investors of these
financial institutions but represents the worst kind of subservience
of public institutions and public money to political decisions. It is
a betrayal of the confidence of the investors.
The Maheshwar project that will affect the lives, lands and
livelihoods of more than 40,000 people of the area has been severely
criticised in several international as well as Government reports. As
recently as June, 2000, a report commissioned by the Development
Ministry of the German government sharply indicted the Project. The
German government report notes the most flagrant and open violations
of the Rehabilitation policy of the Madhya Pradesh government as well
as the statutory clearances of the Central Ministry of Environment
and Forests. It concludes that there is no cultivable land for the
rehabilitation of the affected people available in sufficient
quantity even by the admission of the Government of Madhya Pradesh
itself, and that "if the R&R policy were executed as provided, the
additional cost to the project would require an entirely new
financing package several times larger than currently provided for
R&R. " Thus if full and fair rehabilitation of the affected people is
to be done, the Project becomes socially and financially unviable .
The German Development Ministry report of June, 2000 only confirms
once again the 1999 report of the joint team of the Central
Environment Ministry, Ministry of Rural Development and Water
resources as well as the 1998 report of the Task Force Committee
constituted by the Madhya Pradesh state government ,that in the
absence of cultivable land and other resources for rehabilitation,
the Project cannot continue without serious legal and human rights
violations on the rehabilitation front. The financial institutions
will have to take cognizance of these governmental and international
reports.
On the financial front, the CRISIL reports of June 1998 and October
1999 have pointed out that a bankrupt MPEB - the monopoly buyer of
power from this Project for the next 35 years is in no position to
pay for the expensive power to be produced by this Project. In fact,
the latest draft report of CRISIL of October 1999 has pointed out
that the MPEB will not be in a position to service IPP payments
unless it takes recourse to increase of tariff in the domestic and
agricultural sectors and the closure of welfare schemes like single
point connections to the poor.
The Maheshwar Project will produce electricity that will be
prohibitively expensive. This expensive power will stop thousands of
agricultural pumps and pauperise the peasantry in the state, bring
darkness into the homes of thousands of common people who cannot
afford this power, drive power loom workers to the brink of suicide
and cause small industries to close down.
In these circumstances ,once again, the Narmada Bachao Andolan calls
upon the financial institutions to either prove that the Project is
financially viable and will help provide cheap and reliable power to
the common people of this country and that the rehabilitation of the
affected people according to the required norms is possible, or to
withdraw from this Project.
Alok Agarwal Kalabai Patidar Mangat Verma
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to majordomo@netvista.net
with no subject and the following text in the body of the message
"unsubscribe irn-narmada".
----- End of forwarded message from owner-irn-narmada@netvista.net -----