Meta Strips closure won't send wrong signals : CM

Sandesh Prabhudesai
20 April 2000  

Goa government has dismissed the allegation that wrong signals are being sent all over the country due to closure of the controversial Meta Strips plant in South Goa following violent public protest early this month.

Stating that his government would seriously probe into the pollution angle of any project that comes to the tourist state, chief minister Francisco Sardinha finds no reason for any industrialist to get scared to come to Goa to start a project.

The local industry however has been very critical of the state government's method of handling the ongoing controversy over Meta Strips, a Spanish collaborated unit worth Rs 250 crore manufacturing brass strips and foils. It has been closed much before the actual production has begun.

"I feel what I have done is right. We are not closing each and every industry. But we will definitely not tolerate if anybody is trying to hoodwink us", says Sardinha. He has now called the protesters on Saturday to discuss the proposal of setting up an experts committee, which would probe into the pollution angle.

The Anti Meta Strips Citizens Action Committee, also supported actively by the Church, is however still not prepared to suggest its representatives on the experts committee which would also have equal number of representation from the owners and the government.

"The local coalition government is run not by Sardinha but union home minister L K Advani at the behest of Group of Jindals and Sushil Khaitan", quips Adv Raju Mangeshkar, the local CPI leader. The project is owned by Khaitan, son-in-law of Dr Sitaram Jindal, CMD of the Jindal Aluminium Ltd.

Rather than resolving the issue by handing over the matter in the hands of the experts committee, the AMCAC has now begun series of public meetings throughout the Catholic-dominated Salcete and Mormugao talukas in South Goa while threatening to intensify the agitation.

Following indefinite hunger strike by 15 AMCAC activists early this month, people surrounding the project had paralysed the traffic along the national highway here by blocking the roads and damaging the public transport buses. It had finally led to closing down of the factory 10 days ago.

"I will go ahead with the setting up of the committee even if the AMCAC does not participate in it", reaffirms Sardinha. In spite of the company officials urging him to lift the closure by this weekend, he is firm on keeping it closed till the committee submits its report.

The AMCAC leaders have made it an issue that the authorities allowed to let the machinery in the factory premised in violation of the agreement made on the methodology to be adopted while closing the plant. Sardinha however feels there is nothing wrong as long as no actual production begins at the plant.

Whether the whole year-long agitation would take much more violent turn or not would be clear only after what transpires at the Saturday meeting, AMCAC secretary Nelson Fernandes has however spelt out their plans in clear terms : "we will not sit quite till the whole plant is destroyed brick by brick".

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