Andhra Pradesh: Action sought against erring industrial units

Visakhapatnam: Both from the point of view of safety, as well as pollution, the Hetero Drugs unit near Nakkapalli in Visakhapatnam District presents a standing example of how the State government has shamefully allowed it to endanger the workers’ lives and imperil the health of the people, former Secretary to Government of India, EAS Sarma, […]

Visakhapatnam: Both from the point of view of safety, as well as pollution, the Hetero Drugs unit near Nakkapalli in Visakhapatnam District presents a standing example of how the State government has shamefully allowed it to endanger the workers’ lives and imperil the health of the people, former Secretary to Government of India, EAS Sarma, has observed.

Stating this in a letter to the Chief Secretary Sameer Sharma here on Saturday, he recalled that in the past, there were two major accidents at the unit, one in 2012-13 and another in 2016, in which 5 workers had lost their lives. In the latest accident that took place on the night of February 23, one person had lost his life and another four grievously injured. This showed how the promoters of the industry, who seem to be in close nexus with the successive political leaderships, have callously been maintaining and running the unit, directly or indirectly responsible for killing the innocent workers and disrupting the livelihoods of their families, he noted.

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“Everytime there is an accident, the State industrial directorates dealing with factory and boiler safety, come up with their postmortem accident investigation reports to mislead the people and forget about them within days, till the next accident takes place. The police too register FIRs but no one knows how and why the cases are closed, once public memory fades. The district administration too washes its hands off the accidents, as they lack any vision on tightening industrial safety in the district. Taking into account the series of accidents that took place at Hetero Drugs, Pharma city and other areas in the district, their total number has exceeded 40 and the lives lost has exceeded 40 to 50,” he said.

Till date, the promoters of Hetero Drugs had been allowed to go scott free, not a single one being put behind the bars, and it was equally distressing to find that not a single senior officer of the Directorates of Factories and Boilers nor any senior officer of the APPCB had been proceeded against, which renders those that supervise them equally culpable, Dr. Sarma pointed out, and urged the Chief Secretary to take the issue seriously and address the problem by bringing to book some of these influential promoters of unsafe industrial units and prosecute them for the crimes committed.