Workers at Vedanta's refinery attack office

Close to 75 workers at the alumina refinery complex of Vedanta Aluminium Ltd (VAL) at Lanjigarh in western Orissa’s Kalahandi district were detained by the police, after 100-odd people, perceived to be a mix of contractual workers and outsiders, attacked the company's office, damaging assets worth '1 crore.

Sources said those who did the vandalism were engaged by L&T, contractor of the VAL expansion project, and were agitated over the serving of retrenchment notices. This was a sequel to the halt of refinery expansion work at Lanjigarh following the N C Saxena committee report and subsequent statement of Union minister of environment and forests Jairam Ramesh, depicting the expansion as illegal in the absence of statutory environment clearances.

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

“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. 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.

According to Kumar, the contractual workers were agitating as L&T had proposed to shift some of the workers outside Orissa, a move stiffly opposed by the workers. They had demanded immediate payment of Provident Fund. Though negotiations were held on Tuesday with the district collector and the labour vommissioner present, the issue could not be resolved.