Battle continues : SECMC rules out relocation of reservoir

Project will affect 15,000 people, claim protesters

HYDERABAD: As residents of a few villages in Tharparkar have begun to raise their voices against the construction of a huge reservoir for storing brackish subsoil water, Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC) has ruled out the possibility of relocating the project.

The company briefed the media on the project site in Tharparkar on Friday, denying that the project will affect thousands of acres of seasonally cultivable land and pastures.

“There is no other feasible land available in this area and we don’t have much time to delay the mining work,” said an official of the company, Kashif Soomro. The company had earlier selected a site near the Rann of Kutch but the place turned out to be a Ramsar site.



The SECMC’s $2-billion coal mining and power generation project is located in Thar Coal Block II. The project includes open-pit mining of coal and generation of 660 megawatt electricity slated for supply in the national grid by June, 2019.

The company needs the 1,500-acre reservoir, being built in Ghurano area, to fill it with the subsoil water, which will be pumped out from the coalfields to allow the mining process. The brackish water will be carried to the reservoir through a 37.5-kilometre-long pipeline of 50 cusecs capacity.

However, the residents of the adjoining villages have taken to the streets against the project and have staged demonstrations outside the press clubs in Karachi and Hyderabad. Some of them have also knocked the door of judiciary by filing a petition against the reservoir’s construction in the Sindh High Court. They have also won support of some civil society organisations and nationalist parties for their campaign.

“This reservoir will affect around 15,000 people and thousands of livestock animals, our farmlands, pastures, graveyard and [the entire] environment,” claimed Nehal Kumar and Sandesh Ramani, who introduced themselves as local residents while protesting on Friday in Hyderabad.



According to the project’s land acquisition officer, Fayyaz Soomro, out of 1,500 acres land for the project, around one-third land at 532 acres is privately owned. “We have so far compensated owners of around 150 acres.”

He claimed that among the people who are protesting in Islamkot in Tharparkar as well as in Karachi and Hyderabad, only one owns a piece of land among the privately owned land. The official added that the company is in the process of compensating all the land owners, assuring that by the end of the process no one will complain about unjust compensation.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 20^th, 2016.