Amaravati: Amara Raja Batteries closed

Amaravati: The major manufacturing unit in Chittoor district, Amara Raja batteries Limited and all battery units of the company at Nunegundlapalli village of Chittoor district have been closed. The company has about 16,000 employees. It also provides indirect employment to about 30,000 people.

They were closed following the orders issued by the Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board. The PCB after inspections had found that the company had not complied with the orders it had issued on January 20, 2021. This company was inaugurated in 1985 by the then Chief Minister NT Rama Rao.

The PCB said that the value of the lead in the common stack attached to oxide and grid casters and paste preparation section was much higher than the prescribed norms.

It also found that the air quality was extremely poor as per the ambient air quality monitoring conducted near the water tank. A team of PCB officials, who visited the company on Saturday in about 10 vehicles, had asked the APSPDCL to disconnect power supply to all units and the Discom immediately complied with the orders.

The report said that it was observed that the blood lead in 99.9 per of employees (3533) exceeded the acceptable level of the 10 mcg/dl. It is observed that the industry had disconnected the pump at formation and recycling pit (ABD) and was not treating or recycling the effluents.

The PCB officials stated that they collected blood samples for presence of lead and tested by the National Referral Centre for lead project in India and found the value to be far in excess of the standard. The blood lead values have exceeded in villagers by 30 per cent. The excess lead values in blood samples of the surrounding villagers shows that the operations of the industrial unit is endangering the public health.

However, the villagers seem to be unaware of the negative impact of this pollution. They said that they had not felt any adverse impact of the alleged pollution. When contacted by The Hans India, Managing Director of the company and TDP MP Galla Jayadev was not available for comment.

However, a communiqué from Amara Raja Batteries Limited said that the action of APPCB at a time of a national emergency in the form of the Covid pandemic, could be calamitous. The company spokesperson said, "All our manufacturing plants have undergone various annual/ bi-annual environmental audits and certifications over many years and have received several awards for safety and environmental sustainability and have adhered to the highest norms of Environment, health, safety."

The statement said the company is taking all necessary steps to comply with the orders given by the APPCB and also had pressed into action its contingency plans to avoid dislocation in supplies of batteries to its customers across product segments including essential service segments like defence, hospitals and telecom.

Amara Raja is the preferred supplier to major telecom service providers, telecom equipment manufacturers, the UPS sector (OEM & Replacement), Indian Railways and to the Power, Oil & Gas, among other industry segments, the statement said.