Rivers pose threat to Kendrapada villages

KENDRAPADA: The menacing Brahmani and its tributary Kani are set to consume the riverside villages of Sanamanga, Panchanapada and Arjunpur under Sanamanga gram panchayat.
The panchayat under Aul block, which has 5,000 people, blamed the apathy of the authorities for the impending disaster.
“The hungry river has already eroded large tracts of agricultural land, houses, three temples and two schools.Our house will soon by swept away because it is only 70 meters away from the river,” said Basudev Jena of Arjunpur village. “Each day, I watch the river from our house. It is beautiful. But I do not know why it is crawling menacingly towards us,” said Chintamani Behera (14), a Class VIII student of Sanamanga.
The government must build a stone-packed embankment to save the village from being washed away, said Pritiranjan Roy, sarpanch of Sanamanga GP. “We did not want any assistance from the government. We only wanted measures to check erosion of the river. Officials visited the village many times but did not take any preventive measures,” Roy added.
Over the past five years, the locals have been urging the BDO to take steps to save the village, but to no avail. Over the past 30 years, Khirod Behera (72) of Sanamanga has shifted four times to save himself from the marching river. Three months ago, he was forced to leave his ancestral village for the last time after the river devoured his house.
Hundreds of farmers living on the banks of the rivers are struggling to protect their land. “The Kani that flows past many villages has been gulping land piece by piece over the decades. During the last election, sundry political leaders assured us of taking steps to check erosion,” said Balalam Das of Sanamanga.
Sarojkanta Mishra, executive engineer of the saline embankment division of Aul, said the government had recently started to stone-pack the 810-meter-long river embankment at Arjunpur at a cost of Rs 3.68 crore. “After the work is complete, the villagers will not face the onslaught of the river,” he said.