SHG women urge Vedanta to stay at Orissa's Lanjigarh

orissadiary.com, Jan 8, 2011

Report by Orissa Diary correspondent; Bhubaneswar: At a time when Vedanta Aluminium is in the verge of closing down its alumina refinery at Lanjigarh, numbers of women of various Self help Groups urged the management to develop their groups by various means and asked not to close down the refinery for the sake of the development taking place at their areas. This situation of VAL comes after bauxite mining at Niyamgiri was rejected by the Ministry of environment and Forest.
On January 06, 2011, hundreds of perturbed women of various SHG groups organized a meet with the senior management of VAL at Lanjigarh where they expressed deep anguish saying “We want Vedanta at Lanjigarh; we can’t live without Vedanta”.
According to the SHG members, they have lost their earning sources after the halt of the expansion project of VAL. However, the situation would worsen more if the refinery closes down. “We are now 16 SHGs in Lanjigarh now. We depend on Vedanta as the business increases due the presence of the industry. However, we got to know that the refinery will close down. If this situation arises, we can’t survive,” said Jasobanti Kumar of “Om Shanti” SHG.
Lalita Majhi of ‘Maa Thakurani’ SHG said, “We are making a lot of profit after the formation of the SHGs, but we will struggle to exit if Vedanta goes away from Lanjigarh. The demand of the products we make have huge demand due to the presence of industry at Lanjigarh. But our SHG groups will struggle to do business if the refinery closes down.”
Reacting to the anguish of the women, Sanjay Pattnaik, Vice-President, VAL, said, “Vedanta will always support the localities of Lanjigarh for their development.” Also present on the occasion were Dr. R. C. Rout, Head – Corporate Social Responsibility, and other employees of VAL.