THOOTHUKUDI: Anti-Sterlite activists thronged the Collectorate here, urging the State government not to grant Sterlite Copper permission to operate its oxygen plant after July 31. Police blocked the entrance using barricades.
The agitation gathered steam again after authorities of the copper smelter plant moved the Supreme Court to extend its permission, which ends on July 31, for six months. Over 500 protesters led by activists Krishnamurthy and Merina Prabu, traders union president Vinayagamurthy, Gunaselan, and Hari Ragavan participated in the protest. They claimed Sterlite’s oxygen plant can be shut as the second wave of Covid has subsided. They also accused the State government of keeping mum on Health Minister Ma Subramanians’s remark favouring the plant.
When Collector Dr K Senthil Raj held talks with the protesters to explain the situation, in the presence of SP S Jeyakumar, the activists said the plant is not producing the quantity of oxygen it promised to the court as one of its plants is still defunct.
During the meeting, activist and retired professor Fatima Babu lodged a complaint against the plant for using excess electricity to generate oxygen. “The plant used 1.32 crore units of electricity since May 13 to generate 1,469.76 tonnes of liquid oxygen and 11,151 tonnes of gaseous oxygen as on June 30. The cost of oxygen production at Sterlite’s facility is at least 10 times more than other private units”, she said. The officials and the committee must check whether the plant is being maintained properly,” she insisted.
The Sterlite plant has so far produced 2,030.34 tonnes of liquid oxygen and 15,829 tonnes of gaseous oxygen, following the Supreme Court’s order on April 27 to operate the oxygen plant on a standalone basis. Barricades with barbed wire were used to stop protesters at the entrance of the Collectorate campus.