The Nicaraguan government and Chinese-born telecoms magnate Wang Jing are due to start work today on the huge inter-oceanic canal that is designed to rival Panama's, website Economist.com reported. 

Nicaragua canal authority president Manuel Coronel Kautz was quoted as saying there was now no doubt that the controversial project would indeed go ahead.

The website said Coronel could not say where construction would begin of the 172-mile (278-kilometer) US$50 billion canal, to be built by Hong Kong-based HKND, of which Jing is the chairman.

Little about the project has emerged since June 2013, when Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and Jing signed a congressional agreement giving HKND the rights to construct and manage the canal and associated projects for 50 years.

There have been widespread protests in the country over recent months strongly opposing the project.

Last week, residents of the southern area of El Tule held demonstrations on a highway aimed at blocking the passage of what they reported to be military and HKND personnel.

Around the same time more than three thousand people also took part in a peaceful protest in the capital Managua, demanding human rights of people living along the proposed route to be respected and the project to be halted.

In mid-November another group of protestors gathered in the town of Tolesmaida on the south-westerly edge of Lake Nicaragua - through which the ships using the canal would pass.

Many of the protestors here were reported to have been loyal supporters of the country's left-wing president - who was once part of the Sandinista National Liberation Front junta that overthrew the Somoza dynasty in 1979 - but now believe they have been betrayed by him.

Photo: Wikimedia Creative Commons

www.freshfruitportal.com