CHENNAI: Chennai Port Trust’s decision not to disclose the expenditure incurred to control pollution from handling of coal inside its premises in response to an RTI query has raised doubts among its employees of possible fund embezzlement by the management.In an RTI plea filed by R Santhanam, general secretary of the Port and Dock Labour Union, an affiliate of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the Chennai Port Trust (ChPT) avoided giving a direct answer and vaguely replied: “The details (of expenditure) are being verified and will be sent in due course (to the petitioner).”Besides other queries, Santhanam in his RTI petition had asked the ChPT to disclose its monthly collection of levy for handling coal as well as expenses towards minimising pollution due to coal handling inside the port since 1991. Though the petitioner sought the financial details since 1991, the port management had disclosed only the month-wise breakup of levy collected for coal handling since 2008, till July this year as `24.33 crore.“When the management was able to ‘verify’ and give the levy collection details for three years, I do not understand why it was avoiding the expense details to its employees,” Santhanam questioned.“About `25 crore has come into the ChPT’s coffer as levy in the last three years, but no one knows what has happened it, which was primarily meant to minimise pollution due to handling of coal,” he said.In reply to another query about names and designation details of 482 port and contract employees working at the coal yard (as disclosed by the management to Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board under Form-II for obtaining permission), the ChPT once again vaguely replied that numbers only have been identified.“While our union did a physical verification at the coal yard, we haven’t seen any presence of such huge number of employees working at the yard there,” Santhanam said. With the reply from the management not satisfactory, he has moved an appeal with the Appellate Authority in the Port.
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