The situation in the Vedanta’s alumina refinery at Lanjigarh in Orissa’s Kalahandi district is limping back to normalcy.
Tension gripped the plant on Wednesday when several contract workers, engaged by the construction contractors L & T, allegedly ransacked the offices in the plant site. Vedanta officials, however, said some outsiders were involved in the vandalism.
Vedanta had engaged L&T as the main contractor for its expansion work which was to take the refinery capacity from one million tonne to six million tone per annum (mtpa)
“The situation is totally normal and the Vedanta’s refinery is running as usual” said a official of the company. Police have arrested and forwarded to the court as many as 32 persons allegedly involved in the incident.
Police deployment, however, is continuing at the plant site. Over 5000 labourers were working in the construction site. Most of them belonged to Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, while others were from the local area.
Fearing police action, most of the labourers have left for their home.
The labour unrest in the plant was set off by serving of retrenchment notice to the labourers by L&T following the halt to the expansion work in the wake of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) terming the expansion as illegal in the absence of statutory environment clearance.
As separation benefit L & T had offered to pay the labourers 50 days salary whereas the labourers had demanded advance salary of 90 days.
The company sources, however, said they were trying to relocate the labourers as the expansion work was put on hold by Vedanta after the MoEF action. Meanwhile, Dangaria Kandha Vikash Parishad, a pro-Industry tribal organisation held rally at Muniguda in Kalahandi district demanding handing over of bauxite mines in Niyamgiri to Vedanta.
The Parishad has submitted a memorandum addressed to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh through the local Block Development Officer (BDO).
