Trees being felled at Noliasahi village for the proposed Posco project. Telegraph picture

Paradip, July 5: Posco project-related work, which was stopped for more than a week following protests, resumed today in the proposed steel plant project area in Jagatsinghpur district and made fast progress with the cooperation of local residents.

On Friday, the district administration had accepted the villagers’ demands for a revised compensation and rehabilitation package to put an end to the deadlock since June 26. Angry villagers had stalled the project work for 10 days because their six-point demands were not fulfilled.

Over 1,700 trees were felled today in Noliasahi and Polang villages. Besides the civil construction work such as the building of boundary wall on the demarcated project border, the resettlement colony in Jokerpada near Polang and road-laying made substantial headway. Work like levelling of dismantled betel vineyards and sand-filling in low-lying areas was undertaken without any hassle.

“The entire exercise went on peacefully with people extending cooperation to officials who were engaged in the project work. Friday’s decision on the revised compensation and rehabilitation package has created a congenial atmosphere in the project area. Everything that was done today was with people’s support. However, armed policemen accompanied the officials as a routine law-and-order maintenance duty,” said Jagatsinghpur collector Narayan Chandra Jena.

“As we did not face any form of hindrance, the tree-felling exercise picked tempo. But for technical snags in the motorised tree-cutting machines, more trees could have been pulled down,” said Kujang tehsildar Vasudev Pradhan.

On the other hand, routine protest continued today in parts of the neighbouring Nuagaon and Dhinkia gram panchayats. While Bhitamati Surakhya Manch, demanding relocation of the project to a nearby area, sat on dharna at Nuagaon, the activists of Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samity (PPSS), which has been spearheading the anti-plant agitation for the past six years, put in place the human barricade at the Nuagaon-Dhinkia border.

“We are not bothered about the progress of project work in Gadakujang gram panchayat. We will not allow the government officials and police to enter Dhinkia for land acquisition. The resistance movement will continue till the Korean steelmaker retreats from this place. We will fight till things reach its logical conclusion,” said PPSS general secretary Sisir Kumar Mahapatra.