Nuapada district Collector Swadha Deb Singh visited some remote villages of Maoist-affected Soseng and Sunabeda gram panchayats in the district on Thursday to discuss with people about their problems. In a meeting she held with people at Sunabeda after her village visit, she was appraised about the problems in the area.
"We demanded that the PMGSY roads, left incomplete due to objection raised by wildlife department, be completed," said Biju Jhankar of Sanbaheli village.
There are as many as fifty human habitations in the two GPs in the Sunabeda plateau area. Works for roads connecting to different villages were taken up under PMGSY for improvement and metal paving in some of those have already been completed when the wildlife department raised objections and stopped the work. As a result, at least eight road works have been left incomplete," adds Jhankar.
Residents of the plateau have been demanding resumption of the works since 2017, but the wildlife department is insisting on adoption of “due process” under the Forest Act, which has not been adhered to by the Rural Works Department.
"We have even met Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and expressed our grievance, but the road works did not resume due to lack of permission from the Department of Forests and Wildlife," informed Sunabeda Sarpanch Tilsingh Jhankar.
According to the Forest Department's website parivesh.nic.in, the forest clearance proposals submitted by the Rural Works Department for improvement of the roads were returned to the User Agency (UA) for further compliance in April 2019.
The EDS (Essential Details Sought) by the Nodal Office are yet to be complied. The online status of these proposals shows, "Pending with UA".
Local leaders of the two GPs said they brought these matters to the attention of the Collector. Some roads in Kermeli panchayat located in the foothills of the Sunabeda plateau in Nuapada block also have not been taken for repair as the forest clearances are awaited.
Construction works of two small bridges between Golabandh and Kankermanji villages have been halted by the wildlife department due to same reasons. "The district administration needs to pay attention to all these issues," said the villagers.
