The residents of Corlim ensured that their protest over the proposed sale of Syngenta unit in the village reaches the ears of the government that has till now played deaf to their demands. On Sunday the villagers met outside the main gate of the unit in Corlim and demanded that the government exercise its right to buy back the 7.54 lakh square metres of land on which the unit stands. According to the villagers, the original sale deed of the land to Syngenta, then Ciba, had a clause that didn’t allow the resale of the land to a third party without giving the original vendor a chance to buy back the land. The original vendor in this case is the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman and the government and the villagers are now demanding that the government exercise this right to buy back the land.
Their reasons for this demand are simple – safety of the village and the people. When news first trickled in of the sale of Syngenta;s manufacturing facility at Santa Monica to Deccan Fine Chemicals, the villagers had already raised protests. They are against the sale mainly because the manufacturing unit is an agrochemical unit and there are safety hazards associated with it. Their contention is that any blast or chemical leakage from the unit could affect not just the village but areas up to a radius of 20 km from Corlim and this includes Panjim. As long as the unit was run by Syngenta, locals were assured that the company would take all precautions to ensure the highest safety measures. Their grouse is that the company that plans to buy the unit does not have a clean record of following safety norms.
Deccan Fine Chemicals, a Visakhapatnam-based company is set to purchase the Syngenta unit and has received clearance from Competition Commission of India (CCI) for the purchase. Deccan Fine Chemicals is engaged in the manufacture of chemical-based active ingredients and intermediates for agricultural chemicals, veterinary medicines and speciality chemicals. What has raised doubts in the people’s minds is that in 2014, one of the company’s reactors at the Visakhapatnam plant had exploded and had left two people dead and injured several others. The locals of Corlim are asking whether the company can prevent toxic or hazardous chemicals from leaking, given this past experience. While the government may not be able to answer this question, it can surely assure the villagers that it will ensure that the company follows every mandated safety measure and not allow it to be lenient on any.
However, the government has not done so. It has instead feigned ignorance of the sale. The State Industries Minister even went so far as to say that the sale of the company does not need the government’s nod as the land on which the unit stands is not within any industrial estate. It is with statement like this that the government shows that the welfare of the people is not what it gives priority to. This led to the villagers, who have formed a Corlim Citizens Civic and Consumer Forum, to state that the minister will be responsible in case of any disaster. That, however, is letting off the minister lightly. Why can’t this government show that it sympathises with the people? Is it only when there is an agitation that it rouses itself to accede to the demands, but requests made are ignored?
The villagers are not merely opposing the sale of the unit, they have also offered suggestions of what can be done with the land on which the unit now stands. One of the suggestions is using the land for the IIT that is proposed to be set up in the State and for which the government is still searching for a suitable site. If the government accepts this suggestion it will indeed show that it stands by the people and not always with industry. It had ignored the people of Cavrem, can it listen to the people of Corlim?
