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Back home, the situation seems quite contrary if not deteriorating, on the very same front as the local representatives of the global FMCG major, Proctor & Gamble, on Wednesday sought the intervention of the chief minister's office after failing to overcome multiple hurdles created against a manufacturing plant being set up on the outskirts of the state capital.
The company had acquired 175 acres of land way back in 2012 in Kottur in the neighboring Mahabubnagar district to set up Asia's biggest manufacturing facility, with a capacity that will exceed that of all its existing plants in India put together, at an investment of $ 800 million.
The idea was to create a manufacturing hub for several of its products in Hyderabad to cater to the entire South India market and beyond as the city is located at the center of all the major markets in the region.
After having invested around $150 million to make the fist phase of the project ready at the location, the company has scaled down its power demand to 2 mw from the originally envisaged 10 mw requirement following the hardships it had to face at the hands of various government agencies, according to the sources in the know.
Consider this: The state government's legal metrology department had seized the weighing equipment that the company had brought from overseas to install in the plant, on some technical grounds, and kept it under seizure for the past 45 days. It had even slapped criminal cases against the company besides demanding heavy penalties for the unknown violations.
The company had laid an approach road at its own cost to connect the plant site with the nearest road even though the government agencies were obligated to create such a facility for the plant under the existing industrial policy.
On the contrary, the government's roads and buildings (R&B) department had slapped a demand notice for Rs 60 lakh on the company just to allow the approach road to be connected to the road under its management for the simple reason that it is going to create an additional traffic.
It does not end here. A local mandal revenue officer(MRO) initiates legal proceedings against the company after having found that 5-6 guntas of government assigned land(40 guntas will make 1 acre of land) was part of the piece of land on which the company had built the approach road. The official does not relent even after the company had come forward to pay compensation to the government towards this error. An officer above him, who is called revenue divisional officer(RDO), issues yet another notice to the company on the grounds that some one living in Nizamabad district had claimed that one of his ancestors had tenancy rights over the land that is currently in possession of P&G.
The officials heading the Hyderabad plant have met the chief minister's principal secretary S Narsing Rao and told him that they could employ just 150 people at the plant which was to provide 1,500 direct and over 4,000 indirect jobs to people by now if these hurdles had not come in their way, according to sources. Incidentally P&G was the only manufacturing company which had promised to provide 80 per cent jobs to locals in the undivided AP.
They also informed him that in several instances the real reason behind the harassment being meted out to them in the name of this and that rule was the demand for personal favours including bribe.
However, neither the company officials nor the chief minister's principal secretary responded to queries on this development by the time of going to press.
When contacted to know the reasons for seizing the company equipment, S Gopal Reddy, controller, Legal Metrology, said it was a closed chapter. " There could be cases if there are violations. Any way, I can not tell off hand as to what were those reasons, over phone. You better approach the local inspector," he told Business Standard in somewhat a harsher tone. Reddy, who is a senior IPS officer of Jammu and Kashmir cadre, had recently came here on deputation as he hails from Telangana.
