Retd judge, film director bat for Kattupalli fishers

Chennai: More than 15 citizens and activists including Justice Hariparanthaman, retired judge of the Madras high court, and director Vetrimaran have sought the intervention of chief minister M K Stalin to help 140 fishermen who had lost their homes and livelihood to make way for the Kattupalli port.
In 2009, Justice Hariparanthaman told TOI, the land was taken to make way for the TIDCO-L&T Shipbuilding yard-cum-port.“The port is now owned by Adani. An agreement signed by L&T-TIDCO, then Tiruvallur collector, and villagers guaranteed permanent jobs from the date of commissioning for one member of each of the 140 families evicted. Thirteen years later, not one family has got a permanent job. The district administration, L&T and Adani are now forcing the workers to give up their demand for permanent jobs and settle for low-wage contract work,” he said.
Anith, one of the fishermen, said that L&T has now declared it will not offer permanent status or benefits of permanency to any worker. “The TN government must come forward to enforce the rehabilitation and resettlement scheme as laid out in the operational directives of August 26, 2009 and fix a time frame to enforce the compliance of L&T and other employers.”
The other eminent citizens are educationist Vasanthi Devi, T M Krishna, M G Devasahayam, advocate R Vaigai, Dr C Lakshmanan, film director Lenin Bharathi, Medha Patkar, Jayati Ghosh, Prabhat Patnaik, Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, Shankar Singh, T Venkat and Shreela Manohar. “A grave betrayal is underway, and only you can set it right so that history does not record that your government too sacrificed the fishermen of Kattupalli Kuppam, Tiruvallur district, to aid a multinational corporation. Promises made in 2009 remain unfulfilled, and the current administration too is not doing enough to enforce the guarantee of permanent employment extended to the fishers,” they said in a letter, urging the chief minister to ensure that oustees are provided permanent jobs with all associated benefits with retrospective effect.