SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad Dec 17: Coal secretary Amrit Lal Meena reached Dhanbad on Friday and began the inspection of the Jharia fire zone area and assessment of the rehabilitation process of Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) for families living in underground fire and subsidence-prone zone.
The coal secretary along with Coal India Limited (CIL) chairman Pramod Agrawal, Dhanbad Deputy Commissioner (DC) Sandip Singh, BCCL chairman cum managing director (CMD) Samiran Dutta inspected Ena Fire Project late Friday evening and directed to intensify the rehabilitation of families living in a dangerous area.
He also saw coal mining in the fire zone-affected project in the Kusunda Area of BCCL.
Meena, after inspecting the Ena fire project, said that the main aim is to settle the families of fire and subsidence-affected areas in a safe place. For this, the execution process of the Jharia Master Plan (meant for the rehabilitation of fire zone families) would have to be stepped up.
In course of his two-day visit to Dhanbad, the coal secretary reached here on Friday evening from Durgapur (Bengal) and held a meeting with the senior officers of CIL, BCCL and Dhanbad district administration at the Koyla Nagar guest house.
They discussed over Jharia Master Plan, fire and subsidence-prone areas, the rehabilitation process of families living in the fire zone, numbers of legal title holder and non-title holder families living in a dangerous zone, their shifting process, measures for controlling fire and drone survey conducted in the Sendra-Bansjora area.
As per the latest survey reports of the agencies conducted under the Jharia Master Plan, 1.4 lakh families have been identified who are living in the dangerous fire zone of which 32,000 are legal land owners and around 72,000 are unauthorised residents.
Senior advisor of the Ministry of Coal Anandji Prasad, CIL executive director MK Singh, BCCL technical director Sanjay Kumar Singh and other senior officials of coal companies and district administration were also present at the review meeting.
