Barapukuria Coal Mine

Affected people to get up to Tk 7 lakh for each acre of land

Disbursement starts next month

7 May 2010, 18:00 PM

Bss, Dhaka

A high-powered government body has fixed the price of each acre of agriculture land at Tk 4 lakh and the price of each acre of commercial land at Tk 7 lakh for the affected people in Barapukuria coal mine areas. "The Barapukuria Coal Mine Authority will start the disbursement of the compensation package next month,” a top official at the energy ministry told BSS yesterday. According to the energy ministry sources to extract one million tonnes of coal per year from this coal mine through open pit mining, it needs to acquire 300 acre of land at Barapukuria immediately. The energy ministry on Thursday sent the file to the Prime Minister's Office for approval. However, it asked for Tk 194 crore for land acquisition. The government set to start the process to extract coal through open pit mining from Barapukuria North from next year. To materialise the idea the government has started negotiation with 1300 affected families of Barapukuria from December last to acquire 646 acres of lands in seven villages in Dinajpur in four phases between 2010 and 2013. The energy ministry official said the resettlement package was an outcome of yearlong continuous meetings between the affected people of Barapukuria, the mine authority and local and central leaders. “We hoped we could start our job very smoothly," he added. Earlier, the inter-ministerial committee comprising land, communication, law and energy ministries decided that the affected people will get compensation as per country's land acquisition law. The meeting also decided to promulgate an ordinance to implement the idea to establish a coal mine city in the country's northern zone in future. “The mine authority has signed a MoU (memorandum of understanding) with the affected families of Barapukuria in May 2009 while they fixed per acre of land price at Tk 35 lakh,” energy ministry sources said. According to sources at the energy ministry, the government would compensate Tk 260.76 crore under the first phase in the current fiscal, Tk 41.21 crore in 2010-11, Tk 13.13 crore in 2011-12 and Tk 9.12 crore in 2012-13 to extract one million tonnes of coal per year from the mine.