By IANS,
New Delhi : Uncontrolled coal mining and thermal power plants in Madhya Pradesh’s Singrauli district have caused environmental destruction and health hazards to the people of the district, a report by a Greenpeace fact-finding team said Thursday.
“The community lives in the shadow of coal mine burdens, with dust everywhere. They have no reliable livelihood and their health has been ruined,” said Justice (retd) Suresh Hosbet, a former judge of the Mumbai High Court, and a part of the four-member fact-finding team.
The team, on the grounds of its visit to the eastern Madhya Pradesh district in July, states “ignorance of large scale ravaging of land and people”. The report comes at a time when the environment and forest ministry is mulling over fast-track approval of coal mining through a Group of Ministers (GoM).
The report highlights different mining and industrial operations responsible in bringing the village life, and ignoring the health impacts in the region.
With a population of over 11 lakh, capacity of Singrauli’s thermal power plants account for around 10 percent of the total installed capacity of thermal plants in the country.
Among other members of the team were human rights lawyer Kalpana Kannabiran, journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, and R. Sreedhar, who heads a people’s forum affected by mining.