Mine encroaches on learning space at Sonus - ToI

Gauree Malkarnekar, TNN | Oct 31, 2012, 04.11AM IST ADVOI: A cloud of red-brown mining dust stirs every time a vehicle zooms past the main road lining the Sonus hamlet deep in Sattari taluka. As the dust settled at 8am on Tuesday, tiny silhouettes were visible on the horizon in blue and white uniforms walking towards a large mining area three-and-half kilometres from their homes in Sonus. Fiddling with the straps of their backpacks and chatting with one another, the children entered the mines only to disappear from sight again. Soon enough, and with the mining activity halted due to the ban, chanting of poems and a teacher's loud instructions were heard in a low-lying area in the centre of the mined region. The government primary school at Sonus stands encircled by now silent mines, and a few trees wilting in the blazing sun and sting of the mining dust. Inside the concrete box structure, the lone teacher switches between students of Classes I to IV. As the teaching gains pace, parents, who accompany their children, now as a habit, as they earlier did it to protect their children from mining traffic, return to their mud houses in the largely tribal village. "Since 2005, we have been petitioning different authorities. Once the deputy collector and mamlatdar came for an inspection but nothing positive came out of it. The school area is 390 sq m on paper, one can see how 250 sq m or less belongs to the school today after encroachment by mines," Vaman Gawde, head of the school parent teacher association, said. Last year, the school had 18 students on its rolls, this year only a dozen stayed back to fight the mining dust each morning. An access road to the school is non-existent and students have to make their way through a small opening in the temporary laterite fencing that marks the mining lease area. "Most parents prefer to send their children to a school in Sanquelim. Though it is nine kilometers away, we put some money together and hire a vehicle to transport our children there. This saves our time. In case of the Sonus school, we have to walk our children to and back from the school to help them navigate the mining trucks," Shane Gawade, a parent, said. Time equals money for the tribals who mostly work as daily wage labourers at Honda and surrounding areas as their fields, cashew plantations and natural water bodies have been swallowed by mining. "This year it is quiet in class. Earlier, we could hear a noise like many stones falling at the same time throughout the school hours," eight-year-old Shubhangi Gawde, a Class IV student at the school, said. Parents complain that children suffer from cold and cough throughout the year with the irritant dust perennially floating in the air. "Teachers posted to the school keep seeking transfers as it is difficult to work in the noise and dust. Also, there is no public transport available to the school and the teacher has to walk over three kilometres to access it. There are no buses plying on the route as the road space is occupied by trucks when mining is on," a middle-aged villager, Piso Gawde, said. Parents claim there have also been attempts to have the school shifted to another plot so the institution's land too could be used for extraction, but villagers remained adamant that the school would not be shifted further away from the village it serves. "The mining department, the Indian Bureau of Mines and other authorities that issue approvals for mines do not visit the sites before issuing the permissions. That's the reason one sees such situations of mines operating on all four sides of a government school. The school has been here since we can remember, yet mining was permitted and it now appears as though the school is the encroacher in a mining area and not the other way around," former Honda panch Hanumant Parab said. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/Mine-encroaches-on-learning-space-at-Sonus/articleshow/17027400.cms