VAL employees appeal to save Lanjigarh plant

Hundreds of VAL employees demonstrated before the main gate of Vedanta Aluminium Limited (VAL) at Lanjigarh on Wednesday as their future appears to be in the dark. They appealed to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to save the industry from closure.

On the one hand, the stiff opposition by the tribal community and AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi’s commitment to save the Dongria and Jharnia Kondh tribals’ livelihoods by protecting the Niyamgiri hill and on the other hand the uncertain future of the VAL refinery plant due to scarcity of bauxite has put the State Government in trouble in ensuring continuance of the industry in this backward region.

Had the Government given a favourable decision earlier for bauxite mining at Niyamgiri, neither the tribals nor the VAL employees would have faced such a situation. Only two days’ bauxite stock at its refinery complex has forced VAL to shut down its plant temporarily until no other mining company is ready to offer the raw material. The plant is hardly able to continue its operations after operating 10 hours per day since last 20 days, said VAL Lanjigarh COO Dr Mukesh Kumar.

VAL used to access bauxite from Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, but with the expiry of the mining leases all the private mine owners in these States stopped to supply bauxite, Kumar said.

The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests’ (MoEF) direction to VAL to again apply for its plant’s expansion from 1 million tonne to 6 MT and the delay in a decision by the Supreme Court on Niyamgiri mining has put the industry in utter trouble for last two years.

Dr Kumar told the media, “We always tried our best to develop this region. When the Supreme Court gave its verdict, it was our first project in India where 5 per cent of the profit before interest and tax or `10 crore, whichever is less, had to be used for local area development. After the Supreme Court’s verdict, we even spent `25 crore during the last two years and most parts of the region were developed by us. Till today, no other project has invested so much in local area development after the Supreme Court’s direction to Vedanta.

He pointed out that 70 per cent of VAL employees are from Odisha including 28 per cent from Kalahandi and Rayagada districts. Around 7,000 people are directly or indirectly dependent on the plant whose future is now in the dark. “We could not run this plant above 70 per cent capacity due to insufficient bauxite for last five years. We can’t run the plant below 70 per cent of its capacity. To run a 1-MT-per-annum refinery plant at full steam, VAL needs 300,000 tonnes of bauxite every month,” Dr Kumar further pointed out.

Sources said that at Vedanta’s Annual General Meeting on August 28, Amnesty International South East Asia researcher Ram Gopalkrishnan is going to put up a report on the table which may pressure the investors to change their decision.