Vedanta lays off 300 workers at Lanjigarh plant

With uncertainty looming over its alumina refinery at Lanjigarh in Odisha's Kalahandi district, Vedanta has started laying off workers at its one-million tonne per annum alumina plant.

The plant has already cut about 300 jobs of all categories. The process of cutting jobs will go on, as the future of the plant hangs in balance due to non-availability of bauxite, the main raw material to run it in full capacity, a company official said.

Job cuts at the plant that employees about 2,000 people, including those outsourced, are likely to be proportional to output reduction, he said. Company officials have already indicated that the refinery might be shut down due to lack of bauxite.
 

The plant is now running at 50 per cent capacity. Since the company did not get the bauxite from local sources, it is importing the raw material from outside the state such as Andhra Pradesh, Maharastra, Gujarat and even from places abroad like Papua New Guinea to run the plant. The refinery unit is incurring about Rs 3-crore loss daily," said chief operating officer KK Dave.

"The plant will be shut if the company will not get raw material from within the state," he added. Besides, the lack of bauxite linkage, fall in global aluminum price was another reason that has turned the Lanjigarh unit unviable.

The plant was closed for about seven months in December 2012 due to the shortage of raw materials. The company, however, had re-started the plant with reduced capacity in July 2013.

Vedanta had set up the refinery in 2007, keeping an eye on the bauxite mine at Niyamagiri, spread over Kalahandi and Rayagada districts. In 2004, Vedanta had entered into a joint venture with state-owned Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC), the original lessee of Niyamagiri deposits for mining and sourcing of three million tonnes of bauxite per annum for its Lanjigarh plant.

However, the mining plan was shot down by the ministry of environment and forest first on objections by activists and then on the basis of opinion expressed in gram sabhas held on the orders of the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the Vedanta Land Losers' Association appealed to the state government to intervene and ensure running of the plant by providing alternate bauxite sources.