Tension grips Vedanta's alumina refinery complex

Tension gripped the alumina refinery complex of Vedanta Aluminium Limited (VAL) at Lanjigarh in south Orissa's Kalahandi district when 100-odd miscreants, perceived to be a mix of contractual workers and outsiders, attacked the company's office, damaging assets worth Rs one crore.

Sources said, the workers, who indulged in this vandalism, were engaged by L&T, the contractor of the VAL’s expansion project. They were agitated over the serving of retrenchment notice to them by the employer.

The retrenchment was a sequel to the halt of refinery expansion work at Lanjigarh following the NC Saxena committee report and subsequent statement of Union minister of environment and forest Jairam Ramesh depicting the expansion as illegal in the absence of statutory environment clearance.

However, when contacted, VAL authorities clarified that neither VAL nor its contractor L&T had issued notices to lay off the contractual employees. He said, these workers were being relocated to sites outside Orissa by L & T and they were unwilling to accept the proposal.

VAL presently has 740 permanent employees and 2400 contractual workers engaged in its alumina refinery project.

But sources said, the labourers were agitated after L&T declined to pay them salary for 90 days before retrenchment. L&T had agreed to pay them 50 days salary, which was unacceptable to the contractual workers.

Though no casualty has been reported, some of the security personnel of VAL have sustained minor injuries and the company has filed an FIR (First Information Report) against damage to office assets. Police forces have been deployed at the site to avert any untoward incident. The company aimed to resume full scale operations at the refinery site from this evening.

“As many as 74 labourers were detained at the Lanjigarh police station for their alleged involvement in vandalism, while three platoons of police forces have been deployed in the area to maintain law and order. The situation is under control now”, said Akshaya Pradhan, sub-divisional police officer of Kesinga.

"Trouble began at around 11:20 pm last night when 100-odd miscreants attacked our company's office. Thereafter, our refinery complex plunged into total darkness for about 45 minutes when some unidentified persons switched off the main switch of the plant.

The trouble mongers were probably a mix of contractual workers and outsiders as nothing could be viewed clearly in darkness. These agitators finally fled after the project affected people staying in the company's rehabilitation colony came to our rescue”, Mukesh Kumar, chief operating officer (Lanjigarh) of VAL told Business Standard.