Madhuparna Das

Dulki (Gosaba), July 20

Sukhchand Majhi (22) stretches out his arms to show his flaky skin marked with raw saltwater sores. A quick glance reveals that his fingers remain submerged in soft black clay for up to 10-12 hours a day when he is frantically shoring up a crude sea dike surrounding his remote island home at Dulki, a tiny hamlet in the Sunderbans, home to the world’s largest delta. But now, the construction work for the 2000-feet stretch of the broken embankment in the village has been stopped by the contractor claiming fund crunch.

Majhi received only Rs 250 for 40 days of work on the dike as against Rs 2,000 the contractor promised him at a wage of Rs 50 a day.

“Sasthi Babu, the contractor, said he did not get the funds to carry out the construction work or to pay the money due to the labourers (read the villagers),”said Majhi.

“We are feeling helpless now and do not know whether this partly-constructed dike can withstand the next tidal waves. We worked hard without payment as we do not want to be engulfed by tidal waves again,” he added.

State Irrigation Minister Subhas Naskar, however, seemed unaware that the work had stopped. “The construction of the embankment is being done by both the state irrigation department and the local panchayat in places where the embankment has been totally breached and the river water has started flowing into the village. These include Lahiripur, Choto Mollakhali, Kumirmari, Dulki and Sonagaon. Sasthi Babu is our contractor and we did not ask him to stop work. We will look into why work was stopped in the area.”

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