By A Staff Reporter

Kathmandu, Jan.27

The West Seti Concern Society (WSCS) on Tuesday said that its serious attention had been drawn towards news reports regarding the visit of the Fact Finding Mission (FFM) of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and its consultations with the ‘concerned people’ about the project.

The WSCS claimed that the Snowy Mountain Engineering Corporation (SMEC) that has undertaken the responsibility of carrying out survey and feasibility study on the project had neglected the concerned local stakeholders. The Society criticised the SMEC that the latter had not been disseminating all the facts and information about the project to the local people since the very beginning.

Talking to The Rising Nepal, Bhim Bhandari of WSCS said that although they were invited to the meeting with the visiting ADB team, they were not included in the discussion. "We only came to know about the meeting’s outcome from media the next day that the team and the concerned people discussed on the local demands," he said.

He charged that the SMEC was misleading the ADB by hiding the reality about the project and local people’s demands.

According to him, the project published a 1200-page Environment Impact Assessment (EIA), formulated a resettlement policy and a report on the project-hit people. "But the same report was brought out as a 15-page document in the vernacular Nepali language. This clearly shows that the report has not incorporated the project details," he said.

"The report has also projected the project site as a wasteland," he said.

He also claimed that the contracting company had also not made public any agreement struck between the Government of Nepal and the project partners.

He warned that they would not allow anybody to enter into the project site if the working procedures were against the interest of the local people.