Samina Bano dreads Mondaymornings. At 51, half past her prime, sweeping off the fine layer of coal dustoff the four floors of Karma Paes Avenue in the heart of Vasco is hardly heridea of the first day of the week. She mumbles 'why do Mondays come so often'.Monday is a bad day as after a holiday of the weekend she has to put in acouple of more hours of effort to clean up the corridors of the building metresaway from MPT's coal spewing Berth No 10.
Down below, a dusty vegetablemarket shares a boundary with the controversial coal berth no 10 and 11, ofMormugao Port Trust (MPT). Most of vegetable vendors here keep an extra pail ofwater, to wash off the coal dust and keep their produce afresh.
For most Kharewaddo residents,Vasco, the Bogda jetty and surrounding area of MPT, battling with coal dustpollution has been a regular phenomenon for the last one and half decades, whena manually-handled coal terminal, (berth numbers 10 and 11, was put intooperational for dirty cargo coal/coke for requirements of the Jindal Aluminiumand Steel Plants located in Vijaynagar in Karnataka, while barely 1.5 milliontons of coal that amounts 10 per cent for local industries off which majorityis consumed by Goa Carbon.
The High Court disposing off asuo moto writ petition of Concern Citizen of Vasco, on Feb 24, 2012, orderedMPT and Mormugao Port Users to handle coal at Berth no. 7 or Berth no. 11,after mechanization and storage of coal in closed shed project and at Berth No.10 till the proposed completion and commissioning of the said project inOctober, 2014 depending on the berth availability.
The President of ConcernedCitizen’s of Vasco, Adv T T Shreedharan, is most relieved. ‘Vascoites deserveclean air”. “However, till Oct 2014 we have to inhale poisonous dust,"exclaimed a furious Goa Boat Owner Association President Simon Pereira, whobeen battling against coal dust pollution outside and lead an agitation thathad closed down the MPT port operations for three days, four years ago.
Crusaders are skeptical ofstake holders in the coal business obeying the Court order. They apprehend thatthe coal lobby might file another affidavit to buy some time from court sincesame thing was repeated earlier.
