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Tata Steel’s soon to be commissioned six million tonne greenfield steel plant at Kalinganagar has provided direct employment to 2602 people.
Data provided to the state assembly by industries minister Debi Prasad Mishra shows that of the total direct employment of 2,602 (as on January 2015), 305 people have been given jobs from the families displaced by the project.
As many as 335 people within the Kalinganagar area (in Jajpur district) have been absorbed in the project. The steel firm has hired 731 people from outside Kalinganagar. Within Odisha, a total of 1,371 have been employed in the project while 1,231 people have been drawn from outside the state. Analysis of category wise recruitment reveals that 131 people have been hired in the senior executive level, 1,491 at the managerial/supervisory level, 554 in the skilled cadre, 275 in semi-skilled and 149 at the unskilled level.
All of 149 people employed at the unskilled level have been chosen from the state, complying with the state government’s mandatory employment clause for industries that have entered into memorandum of understanding (MoU). The clause requires industries to reserve 90 per cent jobs for locals in the unskilled and semi-skilled category, up to 60 per cent in skilled category and 30 per cent for the supervisory and managerial cadre. Tata Steel’s Kalinganagar project has also ensured compliance in the semi-skilled and skilled categories of employment.
Tata Steel is setting up a six million tonne steel mill at Kalinganagar of which the first phase with three million capacity is expected to be commissioned soon. The cost of the integrated steel plant has escalated to Rs 40,000 crore, much higher than Rs 15,400 crore estimated in the MoU signed with the company in 2004. This is due to delays in executing the project.
In the MoU, Tata Steel had indicated that a six million tonne per annum integrated steel plant can be established only with the assured source of captive iron ore mines containing at least 250 million tonne of reserves.
