Posco project work going on in Noliasahi village. Telegraph picture

Paradip, July 6: The authorities undertook an on-the-spot review of the status of schoolchildren and prepared groundwork for the resumption of classroom teaching in the proposed Posco steel project area.

Drawing flak from the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, the administration woke up today to ensure that the children were kept away from the resistance movement and back to school. The modalities were worked out for the normalisation of functioning of the primary schools and the anganwadi centres.

“We visited the Badabagapur transit colony and the Balitutha primary school on the outskirts of the project. Moreover, a team of officials also inspected two anganwadi centres. The purpose was to see that the children and their rights were duly protected,” said Jagatsinghpur collector Narayan Chandra Jena.

“The anganwadi centres were functioning normally. We are trying to streamline the nutritional support programme in the project area villages. The administration is intent on providing nutritional backup to all the tiny toddlers in the project villages,” said Jena.

“The primary school was being used for the stay of police forces due to lack of alternative accommodation for them. We are making arrangement to vacate the school very shortly,” said Jena.

At present, a drive is underway to educate the parents not to involve their wards in the resistance movement. Chidren are also facing problems in the transit colony were being addressed to, he said.

In another development, the project related works such as, tree-felling, ground-levelling of the demolished betel vineyards, road-laying, sand-filling of low-lying areas, project boundary and resettlement colony construction speeded up in the Nuagaon gram panchayat area.

About 500 landlosers from the project area, who had been issued job cards, were on the job carrying out the civil construction works as the project work received impetus with the people’s involvement.

“Directed by the district administration, the company engaged by the Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation to undertake the project work has begun issuing job cards. This move has paid rich dividends with extension of local support to the project work. The farm would issue job cards to about 2,500 landlosers shortly to engage them in the work,” said special land acquisition officer Nrusingha Charan Swain.

Despite the protest dharna by the Bhitamati Surakhya Manch, a local outfit opposing the plant, the boundary wall construction work today started at Nuagaon. Earlier, the construction work was confined only to Noliasahi and Polang area under the Gadakujang gram panchayat.

Work for the boundary wall commenced along the Nuagaon border. Preliminary work of about 300-metre boundary line was completed today. Over 1,700 fruit-bearing and classified forest-category trees were pulled down. Moreover, the sand-filling work of the 90-acre resettlement colony at Jokerpada under the Gadakujang gram panchayat had also progressed, said Kujang tehsildar Vasudev Pradhan.

However, the Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samity, the outfit which had been opposing the plant, continued its human barricade on the Dhinkia-Nuagaon border as leaders of the CPI (ML) visited the project area to express solidarity with the protesting villagers.