Amid the fear of losing their jobs and getting deprived of the healthcare and other basic facilities they are enjoying now, — hundreds of people of Lanjigarh in Odisha’s Kalahandi district on Tuesday stepped up pressure on the Orissa government to provide bauxite to the one-million-tonne Vedanta Aluminium Limited (VAL) plant.
The local people, who were also joined by the employees of VAL refinery, submitted a memorandum to the Kalahandi collector seeking immediate steps to ensure uninterrupted bauxite ore supply for the refinery located at Lanjigarh.
The `4,500-crore refinery project at Lanjigarh is facing an imminent shutdown due to non-availability of bauxite, the key raw material to produce alumina.
Unable to run the refinery to its full capacity since inception due to scarcity of bauxite, Vedanta Aluminium Limited (VAL) on September 6 informed the Orissa government about its plan to shutdown the plant from December 5.
Closure of Vedanta Aluminium Limited will leave thousands jobless, it was apprehended in the memorandum handed over to the collector D.S. Satpathy. The company also stated that it could not run the plant to its full capacity during the last five years.