Forest Dept notice puts livelihood of N. Gujarat salt pan workers at risk

By Haresh Jhala

Gandhinagar, Feb 26 (SocialNews.XYZ) The forest department has issued another notice to small salt pan workers in North Gujarat. The reason is that their activities are disturbing wild asses in the Little Rann of Kutch. This notice will snatch away the livelihood of some 1400 families, and the salt industry will face hundreds of crores in losses.

The moot question is whether these salt pan workers encroached on forest land or whether the Gujarat Forest Department failed to follow the Supreme Court's 1976 directive and failed to demarcate the forest area after 45 years.

Hiriben, whose age is around 80 years, complains that her father and in-laws were manufacturing salt in Venu village, and now her son and his family are manufacturing salt on the same salt pan, which has been stopped by the forest department for the last 15 days. She worries about how her family will survive and feed their children. She fears a financial loss of around Rs 3 lakh-Rs 3.50 lakh, on which they would have survived an entire year.

In Santalpur, the forest department has just issued notices and stopped workers from manufacturing salt, whereas in Aadesar, they have damaged pumps and borewells that were used to pump water for salt manufacturing. This has caused losses to salt pan workers in this region of Rs 4.5-Rs 5 lakh, according to Ghanshyambhai Zula, the district coordinator for Agariya Hitrakshak Samiti.

Zula claims that none of these families have encroached on forest land because they have been producing salt for generations, even before the Indian Forest Act came into existence.

According to the Indian Salt Manufacturers Association, Gujarat has 12000 salt production facilities, of which 1000 are organized. The remaining small players control the entire market and directly employ 5 lakh people, and give indirect work to another 2 lakh persons.

Indian Salt Manufacturers Association president Bharat Raval feels, "The only solution to the problem is that the forest department should complete the forest settlement proceedings, which have been pending for more than 30 years. On the completion of the process, it should demarcate forest areas and create a wild animal sanctuary on the ground under Section 20 of the Forest Act."

Once the sanctuary is demarcated on land, it will be clear whether there is any encroachment on forest land or not.

Source: IANS