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Goans fear metals firm will cause pollution, launch campaign

Sandesh Prabhudesai in Panaji

A pollution-related controversy has begun in Goa involving Meta Strips, a Spanish collaborated company in the manufacture of brass strips and foils. Meta Strips is a 100 per cent export oriented unit at Sancoale in South Goa.

Villagers of Sancoale, Cortalim, Consua and Quellosim of Mormugao taluka (sub-district), which also includes the port town of Vasco, are up in arms along with a few environmental groups and scientists from Goa University, demanding scrapping of the project.

Sushil Khaitan, chairman and managing director of Meta Strips, however, strongly refutes the charges, claiming that his company causes neither environmental damage nor health hazards. The project has already been cleared by the government-level high power co-ordination committee as well as the State Pollution Control Board.

The project was cleared when the Congress was in power. Incumbent Chief Minister Luizinho Faleiro was then the industries minister. He has now assured the agitating locals to hold a public debate on the issue while also instructing the PCB to re-examine the pollution angle.

The Anti Meta Strips Citizens Action Committee has raised basic issues pertaining to air pollution, water pollution and noise pollution. It has also demanded an enquiry into allotment of over 200,000 square metres of land for a song.

As the project worth Rs 2.50 billion is coming up on a Sancoale hillock surrounding the villages, Dr Joe D’Souza, scientist from Goa University, fears that metal toxicity of excess of copper and zinc would find its way into the human body through groundwater percolation. Around 200,000 litres of effluents would be discharged every day, he alleged.

"Zinc ingots do not find their way into soil", argued Khaitan. The water would be used for cooling, most of which would evaporate and the rest would be used for gardening within the premises. He claims to have been investing around Rs 8 million to install all kinds of necessary pollution control equipment there.

Khaitan also sought to allay apprehensions regarding air pollution stating that it would be a melting process, and not chemical process, to produce refined copper, the one being used all over the world.

The company assures to install special German equipment from George Fisher Disa to filter and release unharmful air into the environment.

"We are fully aware of our responsibilities and obligations towards the people of Goa," claimed Khaitan. Holding a press conference one day prior to the morcha (rally) of the agitating villagers to the state legislature, he has even assured to place the file of the whole project at panchayat (democratically elected village government) offices for public reading.

He also points out at similar kind of industries by SWIL Limited in Nashik and Indian Smelting and Refining Industries Limited in Bhandup, a Bombay suburb, for the last 25 to 30 years without posing any kind of environmental hazard till date.

"But what is baffling is why countries with advanced technology than ours should export their machinery and scrap to allow huge transport cost and manpower to upgrade copper and its alloys which could have been done in any western country," says Joel Fernandes, convenor of the action committee.

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