Construction work for the proposed 12-million-tonne Posco steel plant resumed on Tuesday after remaining suspended for 10 days following protests by the local people, even as the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) asked the state government to immediately withdraw police forces from school buildings in the project area.
“Construction work at Gadakujanga and Nuagaon areas is going on today. The local people are cooperating,” Jagatsinghpur district collector Narayan Chandra Jena told reporters in Paradip.
Sources said the district administration also felled trees and cleared acres of forest area at Polang-Noliasahi under Nuagaon gram panchayat. A few more betel-vines were also acquired in the project area.
The collector said sand-filling and boundary wall construction work was in progress in Noliasahi, the proposed rehabilitation colony of the Posco project.
Reports from Dhinkia and Gobindpur said members of PPSS continued their agitation demanding withdrawal of the security personnel from the area. Work had come to a grinding halt after anti-displacement activists intensified their agitation and UAC, an outfit backing the mega project, demanded immediate fulfilment of its six-point demands.