Paradip, June 22: Ten years after the Korean steel major, Posco, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the state government, the uncertainty surrounding the eight million tonnes steel plant is far from over.

While the chances of the company getting the Khandadhar iron mines remain remote, activity at the project site has come almost to a standstill.

The human resource development centre set up in the city by Posco for imparting skilled training to local youths, too, wears an extremely deserted look. There is also hardly any activity at its office at Nuagaon village, which comes under the proposed steel project area. Things have been quiet here for quite sometime.

The land acquisition process for the company had come to an end on July 4, 2013. Then the company had gone ahead with raising the project's boundary wall around the acquired land in the face of stiff resistance from local villagers over rehabilitation and employment related issues. Since then, things have hardly moved.

"There is compete inertia so far the project's progress is concerned," said Erasama tehsildar Sarat Kumar Purohit.

The centre had come up in 2007 offering skills in the job of electrician, fitter, welding, plumbing, fabrication and carpenters to the unskilled youths here.

But, the training programme has remained suspended for almost a year now. Later the staff members at the training centre were withdrawn one after the other. For all practical purposes, the training centre is now closed, said sources.

The office at Nuagaon has met the same fate. It lies abandoned. The company is yet to pay remuneration to the local youths, who were guarding the office.

While the company is locked in a dispute with the Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (Idco) over payment for the acquired land, the likelihood of it getting the Khandadhar mines appears weak with the Centre having made it clear that mines will be awarded only through international bidding.

Though the project hangs in the balance, views on this differ among people in Jagatsinghpur district. "The project was supposed to bring prosperity here by generating both direct and indirect employment. But, everything has gone awry. Bureaucratic red tape and political manoeuvring have proved to be the undoing of the project. But, we still hope that the project would come up," said a businessman from Jagatsinghpur township, Harish Chandra Mohanty.

Paradip additional district magistrate Ramkrushna Sahu said: "The company has not informed the administration regarding the centre's closure. However, we have been told by the local people that the training courses have been suspended at the centre."