Taking a leaf from peacefull protest by Anna Hazare, steel manufacturers in Orissa who are desperately looking for iron ore linkages for their units are taking the fight to the government.
?I will call Anna to pursue our cause or I myself will become Anna Hazare,? president of the All Orissa Steel Federation, PL Kandoi, told FE.
The frustration of over 400 steel units having no captive iron ore mines, is quite reasonable as the two-year long fight of the federation to get iron ore linkage has failed to elicit any response from the Naveen Patnaik government, which is championing the cause of industrialisation in the state.
It was on December 16, 2009, the federation gave a memorandum to chief minister Naveen Patnaik, when the latter was at Kalinganagar industrial complex to inaugurate the police station building. Since then the federation has been lobbying hard to get the iron ore supply to the member units. On March 7, the CM assured the federation that their demand would be considered positively. But nothing is coming forth, rued Kandoi.
?The government is neither releasing the mines nor the minerals. What is more, the government is not intervening into the matter to save the steel units from the exploitation of the mine owners. Thus there is corruption somewhere,? alleged Kandoi.
It was on the promise of the state government that iron ore mines would be leased out to those steel units which would be established in the state, several entrepreneurs set up plants in the state. However, after setting up of the plant, the promoters are now running from pillar to post to get the mining leases. Worse is that they are not even getting the iron ore at a reasonable rate. As a result, many of the units are incurring huge losses and facing closure.
The 400 units require about 20 mt of ore per annum against the total production of 45 million tonne per annum in Orissa. Forget about the private mine owners, even the state-owned Orissa Mining Corporation is not in a mood to supply the raw material to these units.