Tata Steel managing director HM Nerurkar urged the 900 big, medium and small manufacturing units located in the Adityapur-Gamharia belt adjacent to the steel city to go green. Enforcing stricter environmental norms by production units on their own before government officials asked them to do it should be the objective of entrepreneurs today as sustainable development would be the order of the day, he said.
Majority of the 900 units are ancillary units to auto major Tata Motors as well as suppliers to other auto companies. A number of them also serve Tata Steel and other companies in the East. ?The government and the environment ministry are clearly not going to be any more lenient; they are going to be extremely strict about environmental standards,? said Nerurkar on Tuesday evening while addressing members of the Singhbhum Chamber of Commerce & Industry (SC&I).
Narrating candidly Tata Steel?s experience with the ministry of environment which recently gave the steel major clearance for expanding steel production from around 6.8 million tonne per annum (mtpa) to around 10 mtpa by March 2011, Nerurkar said several questions were asked by a team of experts from the ministry, and that company officials weren’t prepared for some of them. However, positive attitude displayed by company officials helped the company overcome the ?tense moments.?
?Times are changing so fast that Delhi is not going to be just a rubber stamp,? said the Tata Steel managing director by way of advising entrepreneurs to act on their own towards managing the environment at their units for sustainable development. Urging entrepreneurs to seize the growth opportunity which had come for the country and is expected to be there for the next six to 10 years, Nerurkar said, ?Clearly activity is centred in this part of the world, the Middle East, India, South-East Asia and around five to six countries could be among the top 10 in the world.? Compared to growth displayed by Japan and the European Union which has been between 1.5% -2%, China has been growing between 9.5-10%, India at around 8% and South-East Asia at around 5%, he said.
Nerurkar said as the economy grew, power from fossil fuels-based power plants would become unaffordable and that the way out was to go for nuclear-based power right now, which would also help keep a check on global warming. Speaking on the occasion, SCC&I general secretary Suresh Sonthalia urged the Tata Steel managing director to see that more and more local entrepreneurs got the opportunity to supply the steel major the various items it needed.