THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A Chennai-based company has been ordered to pay Rs 37 crore in damages for setting up a sub-standard effluent treatment plant at the Travancore Titanium Products Ltd. Arbitrator Justice G Sasidharan ordered the company VA Tech Wabag to pay RS 31.12 crore as compensation and Rs 6 crore as interest. The neutralisation plant was set up to convert effluents in the wastewater to gypsum and reuse the purified water for other purposes. It was stated in the agreement that the gypsum produced should be of the quality prescribed by cement companies for their use.
However, the gypsum was of sub-standard quality and the wastewater could not be totally purified. The PSU filed a case against VA Tech Wabag, after the Pollution Control Board ordered it to be shut down for 25 days in 2017.
In 2006, the then UDF government had spent Rs 256 crore for various pollution control measures, including the deal for the neutralisation plant. Following corruption allegations, the present LDF government had ordered a CBI probe into various pollution control deals of the PSU.