Note

Blast at Arcelor Mittal’s Plant
Sankar Ray

Nine men, all 47-plus including four Indians, were injured at the coking plant of Arcelor Mittal Ostrava (AMO) Company, a leading steel maker in the Czech Republic on 7 November. Prague Daily Monitor, an English-language daily front-paged the news on 10 November. "The men aged 47 to 60 years suffered burns on the head, arms and neck and some of them also on the legs". The AMO management tried to cover up as if there was no gas leak. Market Watch too carried news the day after the blast.

Arcelor Mittal spokeswoman Barbora Cerna Dvorakova admitted the incident, having conceded that wounded workers were being treated for burns and a fractured limb at a local hospital. The explosion occurred at 10:15 local time and resulted in the shutdown of the coke oven battery No 11. All the four Indians, based in Kolkata, are techies, associated with the consultancy wing of McNally Bharat Limited, an arm of the Deepak Khaitan group. They were sent to Ostrava for technology transfer in connection with the modernization of the steel plant that the Mittals took over in 2011.

The AMO, especially after having been taken over by the Arcelor Mittal group, is accused of trampling pollution control rules. Environmental Law Service filed a law suit against Arcelor Mittal, in the Czech Republic on 8 April 2008, alleging excessive harmful air emissions and their devastating impacts on health and living conditions of local residents. According to the results of air quality testing carried out in the area since 2005, concentrations of airborne dust, arsenic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the air near the ArcelorMittal steel mill exceed the legal limits by up to 700 percent which means a serious health risk for local people. A specialist study initiated last year showed that none of the 30 samples of soil complied with the required limits in terms of the content of dangerous substances. The study also showed that the number of local children suffering from respiratory troubles exceeds the national average by 15 percent and the number of early deaths exceeds the average by 20 percent, according to ELS.

In October 2011, ITV channel of UK telecast a documentary film The Factory on sustaining pollution and occupational hazards in Ostrava, the third-largest city in the Czech Republic. It focuses on health problems of children the Radvanice and Bartovice districts, adjacent to the Ostrava steel plant. Respiratory troubles among children along with mutational detriment are vividly projected. However, Arcelor Mittal management sought to refute the charge as 'inaccurate and unfair', although failed to reply point by point.

Arcelor Mittal group has earned infamy for blind eye to occupational hazards and industrial pollution around their industrial establishments. A random pick will be very revealing. A steelworker died in a ‘freak accident’ at the Burns Harbor facility of Mittal Steel USA, after being pinned between two girders, at No. 1 Coke Battery when he was caught between the battery and a machine which opens its doors. A few months back quoting Paul Gipson, president of United Steelworkers ‘A steel mill is a terrible place to die,’ Gipson told a reporter of Chesterton Tribune.

The plight of residents around the Mittals' South African steel plant reflects utter neglect of environmental rules. Residents near the site of a steel plant protested outside the offices of ArcelorMittal and handed a memorandum to board member Thami Dikiza at the company’s head office in Vanderbijlpark, south of Johannesburg. A local leader of the South African Communist Party Thabiso Radebe, told Johannesberg Times, stated ‘many residents are sick’ as a result of extensive air and groundwater pollution. ‘They suffer from chronic respiratory diseases’.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 30, February 3- 9, 2013

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