Young World, Dec 8, 2006
The Hindu
In Cuddalore
To mark the 22nd Anniversary of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy a series of events have been organised to draw attention to the environmental crisis in Cuddalore. Despite the existing pollution from 19 chemical industries there are plans under way to install more highly toxic facilities. The five most immediate threats that Cuddalore faces are from a mega PVC plant, a 4000MW thermal power plant, a six million tonne/annum petrochemical refinery, a textile park and a proposal to pump toxic effluents from faraway places into the sea at Cuddalore.
As Dharmesh Shah and Shweta Narayanan, youth activists from the Community Environmental Monitoring (CEM), a grassroots support group engaged in training and providing resources to villagers in monitoring their environment using simple community tools and commonplace knowledge, say, “SIPCOT Cuddalore is already showing the symptoms of Bhopal prior to the disaster.”
As usual children are among the worst affected. Since they spend all their time in the villages surrounded by toxic facilities, they are the biggest recipients of poisons.
Here’s what Dharmesh and Swetha’s suggest you can do: In the short term in order to stop the proposed expansion of Cuddalore write to the Chief Minister (cmcell@tn.gov.in) urging him to save Cuddalore.
Talk to more friends about Cuddalore and the life of children inside the estate. You can also visit Cuddalore and spend a day at the estate to experience the life of a SIPCOT child.
Visit – www.sipcotcuddalore.com or www.bhopal.net