Trees being felled at the proposed Posco plant site (file picture)

Paradip, July 25: The cutting of forest classified trees in Posco project area slowed down today. However, this time the reason was not resistance by the local people, but a mechanical breakdown.

With machines turning dysfunctional midway, tree-cutting exercise was badly affected. Hardly 1,300 trees were cut down today.

Despite routine show of protest in Dhinkia and Nuagaon gram panchayats by organisations that oppose the steel plant project, officials went ahead with forest clearance and ancillary project related works in Gadakujang and Nuagaon gram panchayats without any hindrance.

“The felling of trees as part of forest clearance drive had been stepped up as more motorised cutting machines were pressed into service to pull down the forest classified trees. But our plans went awry as cutting machines went out of order one after the other due to technical snags. As a result, the forest clearance exercise had to be suspended midway. We managed to cut down hardly 1,300 trees as against 8,000 trees felled down during the course of exercise in past two days,” said special land acquisition officer Nrusingha Charan Swain.

The Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (Idco), which is doing the overall supervision of forest clearance and project-related work, has been asked to procure a foolproof motorised cutting machines to avert possible interruption of work in future, said Swain.

Technical snags apart, other ancillary project work went on without any obstruction. An amount of Rs 54 lakh was paid today to prawn dyke owners as compensation as 27 acres of encroached government land was acquired.

The owners of fruit-bearing trees were also paid compensation to the tune of Rs 12 lakh today. The administration has so far disbursed about Rs 50 lakh as compensation towards the felling of fruit-bearing trees,” said Kujang tehsildar Vasudev Pradhan.

“Our emphasis is on clearing the forest areas expeditiously as vast expanse of project territory is packed with tree cover. As major parts of forest cover still remains, the ground-levelling work is not progressing on expected line. We have asked the Idco personnel to press into service more motorised cutting machines for speeding up the forest clearance work,” said Ersama block development officer Muralidhar Swain.

Other project-related ancillary work such as ground-levelling, sand-filling at the proposed rehabilitation colony at Polang, road-laying, construction of project boundary wall and levelling of dismantled betel vineyards simultaneously continued without any hassles today.