Chennai port ordered to stop handling polluting coal, iron ore

May11, 2011
By T.E. Raja Simhan

Chennai : Residents of Chennai living in the vicinity of the city's port may get a breath of fresh air after today's order of the Madras High Court, but, on the flipside, an estimated 10,000 people could be rendered jobless.

And, the Chennai port could lose revenue of nearly Rs 250 crore a year, estimates an official of the port, as a consequence of the order that asks the port to stop handling coal and iron — which generate dust and hence polluting — from October.

The port annually handles nearly 20 million tonnes of both coal (8 mt) and iron ore (12 mt). “We are grappling with today's order. We need to study it thoroughly and take it up our Ministry [Shipping] to take up the next course of action. Nearly 5,000 is our employees while there could be another 5,000 people outside who could be affected,” the official said.

The order was issued by Mr Justice Elipe Dharma Rao and Mr Justice M. Venugopal on a Public Interest Litigation filed by the Avoor Muthiah Maistry Street Residents' Welfare Association in North Chennai nine years ago on the pollution affecting people in the area.

The Court found the measures taken by the Chennai Port Trust “inadequate”. The directions of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board to arrest the pollution have not been taken care of by the ChPT, exhibiting “its callous attitude and scant regard to the public health and security,” the Court observed.

The Court also directed the Centre and the State Government, ChPT and the Ennore Port Trust to “see that not even a single employee is retrenched or otherwise made to lose his livelihood because of the distribution of cargo between Ennore port and Chennai port.”

In 2009, the then Union Shipping Minister, Mr T.R. Baalu, had said that Chennai will become a clean port and handle clean cargo such as cars and containers, and that coal would be shifted to the nearby Ennore once facilities there are ready.

However, subsequently the Ministry retracted from this on grounds that the move would affect the livelihood of a large number of employees. (sourced Business line)

Tags: Madras HC order, stop handling, coal and iron, generate dust