KOCHI: Addressing the media the day after nine armed men attacked and vandalised the head office of Nitta Gelatin India Limited (NGIL) at Panampilly Nagar, the company’s managing director Sajiv K Menon said that there might be some ‘powerful invisible’ force behind the attackers.
“After attacking the company, they walked from the company premises to the level-cross at the Atlantis junction. It took around six minutes for them to reach there. They showed such courage as they might have the backing of some powerful entities,” he said, adding that the incident was not an isolated one as the NGIL had been singled out for many years and victimised unjustifiably by systematic violence.
From November 2008 till date, there were 81 attacks on the company.
“Even on Tuesday, one of our employees was assaulted by an action council member at Kathikudam. Acts like this will send a wrong message to the present and prospective investors in the State. Those who perpetuated the violent acts in the past had taken the law into their hands and had raised false pollution charges against the company,” he said.
“The National Environment Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) has put forward 23 recommendations. As of now, we have implemented more than half of them, and the remaining ones are under various stages of implementation. We shall complete them by March 2015 - way ahead of the stipulated deadline,” he added.
Sajiv said that the company had been paying 130 cr as tax/duty, and a dividend of Rs 6 crore to the KSIDC for the last five years. The company is directly employing 600 people, and 500 persons on contract. It also employs around 25,000 persons indirectly.