A major fire broke out last night killing 1 and injuring 15 in Odisha’s Dhenkanal district
Odisha : A major fire broke out last night killing one and injuring 15 in Odisha’s Dhenkanal district.
Odisha : A major fire broke out last night killing one and injuring 15 in Odisha’s Dhenkanal district.
The present scenario in Odisha is that it has a ‘high class’ democratic government where human life is bargainable through money. No matter who dies for any cause like rape, burning, boat sinking or industrial accident – the government feels comfortable by throwing some lakhs as ‘charity and ‘compensation’. During the tenure of BJD rule this vulgarity has crossed all levels of decency.
On Wednesday (11.11.2013) a great explosion rocked the Blast Furnace-II of Bhusan Steel Plant at Meramandali in Dhenkanal district. Number of people/workers died in it is still unknown and the company refuses to share information about the same despite presence of officers like the Collector, Labour Commissioner, Inspector (Factories and Boilers) and officers of Pollution Control Board at the site. After seven days of the incident, the death toll is not known to them. Now there are vain searches for shoes and foot wears, pant, hand gloves, human skin and bones within the debris to ascertain the numbers of dead peoples. The company in the meantime has made concretized the exploded pits.
Though the police have arrested three of the company’s officers – but not the owner – but it has no meaning at all. Officials have been sent to judicial custody for the simple reason that the Bar Association, Hindol and Dhenkanal, respecting the local sentiment by not appearing before the Court. Nothing more than that. Charges slapped against them are under sections 287, 337, 338, 304, 34 of IPC and 92 of Factories Act. All are bailable. Fact sheet of the company: it is a Delhi based Company, registered in 1987, as Brij Singhal as Chairman and his son Neeraj Singhal the Vice Chairman and Managing Director. They are the owners, and as per the Factories Act ‘Occupiers’. Usually they employ high salaried officers, whose questionable ‘efficiency’ among others is that they behave as munim ji to seth ji and must remain ready to go to jail on behalf of the owner. We may remember about the gruesome Bhopal Union Carbide accident of 1982 in which the Chairman Warren Anderson fled from the site bailing out an officer in India. Owners enjoy full rebate of such situation with the alibi of law.
Highest number of industrial accidents and casualties in private and public sector industries put together in India occurred in Odisha. Odd image of the Meramandali Bhusan Steel Plant perpetuates from its beginning and strangely, according the company report there were only 10 ‘reportable accidents’ with death toll of 98. This figure is highly doubtful. Dangerous Ash Pond accidents of Bhusan Power Plant at Angul (nearby Meramandali) alone have been 7. The Steel Plant and Power Plant are the outcome of the same MoU signed in 2005 between the Bhusan and Government of Odisha. Relationship of this company with the neighbouring population has always remained to be disastrous and inimical. Even for establishing the Meramandali Plant there were large-scale protests among the population and the State Government showed much of highhandedness and brutality and there were many arrests and 2 killings by police firing.
The Wednesday incident has further poisoned the mind of people of Odisha against this company. If truth concealed untruth is bound to fill the void. As Government is unable to ascertain the number of death, people go by their wild conjectures. Odisha press reports the figure of human casualty some as between 124 to 160. Shame is that we count dead men as like fallen trees!
Sec. 62 (1) Factories Act 1948 stipulates that the employers are duty bound to maintain the ‘muster roll’ records of names of all workers , their groups, assigned job and other auxiliary information. It is now obvious that the Company has not done so from its beginning and the Government officers are now in vague chase of the same. And, now this closure news which people wish to believe the least. High officials like District Magistrate and chief inspecting officers who have every right under law to inspect the factory at any time of the day are kept waiting at the main gate for hours and not allowed to go in.
Can any believe that such orders are not just eyewash?
Rabi Kanungo
General Secretary
Rourkela Intellectual Forum