ROURKELA: The Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) may be clocking records in major areas of production but when it comes to industrial safety, the PSU needs improvement. In last six years, as many as seven workers have died and nine sustained injuries in industrial mishaps and road accidents on RSP premises. Eleven such incidents were recorded during the period.
On June 8 last year, a senior technician of Traffic and Raw Material Department was killed after his motorcycle was hit by a truck on the plant premises. The year 2019 though saw a string of mishaps. Safety officer of a contract firm, Bikram Routray (25), died after sustaining critical injuries at Blast Furnace-1 site on December 18. Routray was hit on his face by a fluid coupling which cracked during testing a motor.
Earlier on November 5, a young contract worker Satyanand Tanti lost his left leg when a steel bucket hit him at the ore bedding and blending plant inside RSP. The next day, contract worker Chandan Mohapatra was killed after being hit by a truck on the plant premises. Similarly on August 27 the same year, RSP employee Chandra Sekhar Dwivedi received critical head injuries after his two-wheeler hit a wrongly parked crane.
Six contract workers were taken ill due to leakage of carbon monoxide gas from a pipeline at the blast furnace region on January 25, 2017. A contractor labour Roshan Lakra was killed after being hit by the buffer of a moving crane on August 1, 2016. In 2015, a spate of accidents were recorded. On November 21, an employee Md Naeem had a narrow escape after acid splashed at the Captive Power Plant-I.
Contract worker Gyan Bahadur (40) was killed after heavy iron frame step of an overhead crane fell on him at the hot strip mill (HSM) on August 7. Junior manager S Rounaq (24) was crushed to death after a heavy iron slab dropped on him at the HSM on June 12 while a senior semi-skilled worker Bijay Bodra (55) was killed after being hit by an earth moving vehicle inside RSP premises on May 10.
National Vice-president of CITU Bishnu Mohanty attributed the frequent mishaps inside RSP to lack of proper maintenance and implementation of safety regulations. “Instead of recruiting skilled workers who are better informed about Plant operations, the RSP is engaging contractual workers who hardly know about critical operations,” he said. Mohanty also blamed failure of the SAIL Safety Committee and Factories Inspector for the present situation.