Refinery pollution: Kanakwal village to be developed as township,says DC

He said,“The area will be developed with 40 per cent of it having houses and the rest will have roads,green belts and public utility buildings such as hospitals and schools. We will be giving the land to the villagers in plot form and they can take up the construction on their own. Laying of the sewer and roads will be done by the government. It will be an urban area and not like the original village.”

It may be mentioned that according to villagers,they have 101 acres of land at Kanakwal village while the revenue department is measuring only 41 acres and have asked villagers to “adjust” on 50 acres only. The villagers have not yet agreed on this issue.

However,the DC said,“We will be maintaining the ratio of construction and open area and will sort out this issue as well with the villagers.”

The process,however,will take a long way to materialise,feel the authorities and the villagers. So to provide temporary relief to the villagers,the Punjab pollution control board (PPCB) Thursday installed an ambient air quality monitoring system at the village,which is adjacent to the Bathinda refinery. This was done following the repeated complaints by the villagers that they had to inhale poisonous cases being emitted by the refinery.

Although mobile vans of refinery had already been installed inside the village,but the villagers wanted PPCB to install their own monitors. A PPCB employee will remain stationed at the village for more than a month as the reading has to be taken every eight hours. Later,the PPCB will train a villager to take the readings,confirmed the DC.

Earlier,the PPCB had confirmed the emissions from the factory were within permissible limits,but had said that continuous inhalation was a source of irritation for the villagers —- the reason why they had written to the state government demanding that they be shifted from the village.

Bhakar Singh,Nambardar of the village said,”In protest,we did not participate in the panchayat samiti elections. Not a single voter out of 1,300 from the village went to vote because we want to shift out at any cost and are hopeful of early action from government side.”