Industrialisation tardy in Kalahandi

Expressbuzz, June 12, 2009

BHAWANIPATNA: Though State Government is tom-toming industrialisation, practically things are moving at a snail’s pace in places like Kalahandi which is far away from the State capital.

As part of the Industrial Policy to encourage setting up of large number of ancillary and downstream industries with an aim to generate employment opportunities, the State Government constituted Plant-level Consultative Committees for all large and mega industries in private sector through a notification on February 5 2008. But in Kalahandi the first meeting of the committee was held only on June 5, a good 16 months after the much-publicised notification. And after a long time, a decision was taken to identify ancillary and downstream industries. The alumina refinery of Vedanta Alumina Limited (VAL) at Lanjigarh is the only large industry in the district.

According to district Industries Department, several ancillary, downstream and demand-based industries have been identified for VAL. The ancillary industries identified are those which can produce grinding media, caustic soda unit, resin, lime and fluocolants. The downstream industries are the units which can produce bricks out of fly ash, cement out of fly ash, red mud bricks, red mud tiles and engineering workshops. There is also feasibility for setting up several demand-based industries like those on computer data processing and automobile service. Though VAL contemplated to go for extension of the plant capacity, but no initiative was taken to set up ancillary or downstream industries.

At the first Plant-level Consultative Committee meeting held recently, General Manager of District Industries Centre Parameswar Nayak, also member convenor of the committee, asked VAL to work out and arrange a patch of land on its campus to locate the ancillary and downstream industries which will feed VAL. Representative of VAL and chief operating officer Mukesh Kumar assured that VAL will procure the products of ancillary industries and for the expansion work of the plant the products from downstream industries will be used.

Speakers said implementation of the programme in right earnest will pave way for creation of much-needed employment opportunities for locals besides helping the local entrepreneurs.

Incidentally, in Kalahandi the problem of unemployment among educated youths is a big problem. It was expected that after setting up of Vedanta Alumina the employment problem would be solved to a great extent. However, the problem persists as locals are absorbed in the plant is in a limited scale. According to a report of VAL, out of 771 persons employed in technical and non-technical jobs, only 115 are from Kalahandi , 432 from other parts of the State and 224 are from outside Orissa.

Apart from it, 3618 persons are employed with different project contractors of the VAL . Among them only 564 are from Kalahandi.