Archive for ‘state government’

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07/05/2020

Gas leak at S.Korea-owned factory in India kills 11, hundreds hospitalised

CHENNAI (Reuters) – At least 11 people were killed in India in a gas leak at a South Korean-owned factory making polystyrene products that made hundreds of people sick and led to the evacuation of villagers living nearby, officials said.

The accident occurred some 14 km (9 miles) inland from the east coast city of Visakhapatnam, in Andhra Pradesh state, at a plant operated by LG Polymers, a unit of South Korea’s biggest petrochemical maker, LG Chem Ltd.

Srijana Gummalla, commissioner of the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation, said gas from styrene, a principal raw materials at the plant, leaked during the early hours of the morning, when families in the surrounding villages were asleep.

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  • LG Chem share price falls nearly 2% after deadly gas leak in India

Yashwanth Saikumar Ambati, 23, who lives about 300 metres away from the plant, said he woke up around 4.30 a.m. because of a strong smell.

“I went back to sleep and I woke up around 6 because the smell got stronger. My eyes were itchy, and I was feeling drowsy, light-headed and slightly breathless,” he told Reuters, adding that neighbours also complained of eye irritation and stomach aches.

In a statement issued from Seoul, LG Chem said that the gas emitted in the leak can cause nausea and dizziness when inhaled, adding that it was seeking to ensure casualties received treatment quickly.

Video from Reuters partner ANI shot later on Thursday showed emergency workers in the area rushing to help victims, some of whom appeared to be listless and disoriented.

A number of victims lay unconscious on the streetside, as volunteers fanned them and others carried them to ambulances.

A spokesman for LG Chem in Seoul said the leak was discovered by a night shift maintenance worker and has been brought under control.

According to both the company spokesman and Gummalla, the plant was being reopened after India relaxed a nationwide lockdown that had been imposed on March 25 to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.

Thursday’s incident brought back bad memories of a gas leak at an factory of U.S. chemical firm Union Carbide that killed thousands in the central Indian city of Bhopal in 1984, but thankfully it was on a far smaller scale.

“I pray for everyone’s safety and well-being in Visakhapatnam,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a tweet.

S.N. Pradhan, director general of the National Disaster Response Force, said that at least 11 had died after around 1,000 people living near the plant were exposed to the gas.

FALLING, RUNNING AWAY

B.V. Rani, a revenue official in the district, said she received a call at around 4 a.m. from a police officer near the facility, who sounded panicky. “He asked me to come to the spot immediately,” Rani told Reuters.

When Rani went there, she saw that people had collapsed unconscious in the village adjoining the 60-acre site of the plant.

“I personally helped more than 15 people get to an ambulance who had tried to run away from the village but dropped down within a few metres,” she said.

At least one child was among the dead, a policeman at the site told ANI, whose video showed at least two other children being lifted into an ambulance.

Between 300-400 people were hospitalised, Swarupa Rani, an Assistant Commissioner of Police in Visakhapatnam told Reuters. Another 1,500 people had been evacuated, mostly from a neighbouring village.

Areas within approximately 3-kilometre (nearly 2-mile) radius of the plant were evacuated, he said, with emergency services going from door-to-door to find anyone left behind.

TOP PETROCHEMICAL MAKER

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy said in a televised address that the gas leak occurred because raw material was stored for a long period of time.

The state government will give 10 million rupees ($131,900) compensation to the families to those who died, and it will also form a panel to investigate the cause of the accident, said P.V. Ramesh, a senior aide to the chief minister.

“Obviously something has gone wrong,” Ramesh told Reuters. “Nobody will be spared.”

LG Chem’s share priced closed nearly 2% weaker on Thursday, in a Seoul market that was broadly flat.

South Korea’s top petrochemical maker by capacity, LG Chem acquired the plant in 1997 and established LG Polymers India Private Limited (LGPI), according to a company website.

The LG Polymers plant makes polystyrene products which are used in manufacturing electric fan blades, cups and cutlery and containers for cosmetic products such as make up.

“LG Polymers is a multi national, reputed company, and it is sad that the incident has happened in their plant,” Chief Minister Reddy said in a televised media address.

($1 = 75.8140 Indian rupees)

Source: Reuters

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01/05/2020

India coronavirus lockdown: Train leaves with stranded migrants

Two workers share a meal aboard the first train carrying migrant workers to their stateImage copyright ANI
Image caption Millions of people across India have been stranded by the lockdown

The first train carrying migrant workers stranded by a nationwide lockdown in India has left the southern state of Telangana.

The 24-coach train, carrying 1,200 passengers, is travelling non-stop to eastern Jharkhand state.

Earlier this week, India said millions of people stranded by the lockdown can return to their home states.

The country has been in lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus since 24 March.

However, the movement of people will be only possible through state government facilitation, which means people cannot attempt to cross state borders on their own.

This train is a “one-off special train” to transport the workers on the request of the Telangana state government, Rakesh Ch, the chief public relations officer of South-Central Railways, told the BBC.

The train left Lingampally, a suburb of the southern city of Hyderabad, early on Friday and is expected to reach Hatia in Jharkhand on Saturday.

Mr Rakesh said that adequate social distancing precautions had been taken and food was being served to the passengers.

Workers on board the special train carrying 1,200 passengers to eastern Jharkhand stateImage copyright ANI
Image caption Railways officials said that adequate social distancing precautions had been taken and food was being served to the passengers.

He said each carriage was carrying 54 passengers instead of its 72-seat capacity.

“The middle berth is not being used in the sleeper coaches and only two people are sitting in the general coaches,” Mr Rakesh said.

Before the train pulled out of the station, all the passengers were screened for fever and other symptoms.

They had all been employed at a construction site at the Indian Institute of Technology, a top engineering school, in Hyderabad city.

The workers had earlier protested at the site against the non-payment of wages by their contractor.

Senior official M Hanumantha Rao said the contractor was asked to pay their salaries and arrangement made to send them back home.

The journey was organised at “very short notice”, senior police official S Chandra Shekar Reddy told BBC Telugu.

“We screened them at the labour camp itself and transported them to the railway station in buses,” he said.

India’s migrant workers are the backbone of the big city economy, constructing houses, cooking food, serving in eateries, delivering takeaways, cutting hair in salons, making automobiles, plumbing toilets and delivering newspapers, among other things.

Migrant workers wait to board the first train carrying 1,200 passengers to eastern Jharkhand state.Image copyright ANI
Image caption Before the train pulled out of the station, all the passengers were screened for fever and other symptoms.

Most of the country’s estimated 100 million migrant workers live in squalid conditions.

When industries shut down overnight, many of them feared they would starve.

For days, they walked – sometimes hundreds of kilometres – to reach their villages because bus and train services were shut down overnight. Several died trying to make the journey.

Some state governments tried to facilitate buses, but these were quickly overrun. Thousands of others have been placed in quarantine centres and relief camps.

Source: The BBC

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05/10/2019

India’s onion crisis: Why rising prices make politicians cry

A labourer carries a sack of onions at a wholesale vegetable market on the outskirts of Amritsar on September 19, 2019.Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
Image caption The onion is India’s most “political” vegetable

Onion prices have yet again dominated the headlines in India over the past week. BBC Marathi’s Janhavee Moole explains what makes this sweet and pungent vegetable so political.

The onion – ubiquitous in Indian cooking – is widely seen as the poor man’s vegetable.

But it also has the power to tempt thieves, destroy livelihoods and – with its fluctuating price a measure of inflation – end the careers of some of India’s most powerful politicians.

With that in mind, it’s perhaps unsurprising those politicians might be feeling a little concerned this week.

So, what exactly is happening with India’s onions?

In short: its price has skyrocketed.

Onion prices had been on the rise in India since August, when 25 rupees ($0.35; £0.29) would have got you a kilo. At the start of October, that price was 80 rupees ($1.13; £0.91).

Fearing a backlash, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government banned onion exports, hoping it would bring down the domestic price. And it did.

Vegetable vendors sell onions by the road, at Sector 25 on September 24, 2019 in Noida, India.Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
Image caption Onion prices peaked by the end of September

A kilo was selling for less than 30 rupees on Thursday at Lasalgaon, Asia’s largest onion wholesale market, located in the western state of Maharashtra.

However, not everyone is happy.

While high prices had angered consumers in a sluggish Indian economy, the fall in prices sparked protests by exporters and farmers in Maharashtra, where state elections are due in weeks.

And it is not just at home where hackles have been raised: the export ban has also strained trade relations between India and its neighbour, Bangladesh, which is among the top importers of the vegetable.

But why does the onion matter so much?

The onion is a staple vegetable for the poor, indispensable to many Indian cuisines and recipes, from spicy curries to tangy relishes.

“In Maharashtra, if there are no vegetables or you can’t afford to buy vegetables, people eat ‘kanda bhakari’ [onion with bread],” explains food historian Dr Mohseena Mukadam.

True, onions are not widely used in certain parts of the country, such as the south and the east – and some religious communities don’t eat them at all.

But they are especially popular in the more populous northern states which – notably – send a higher number of MPs to India’s parliament.

“Consumers in northern India wield more power over the federal government. So although consumers in other parts of India don’t complain as much about higher prices, if those in northern India do, the government feels the pressure,” says Milind Murugkar, a policy researcher.

People stand in a queue to buy onions sold at Rs. 22 per kg by the Government of India, outside Krishi Bhawan on September 24, 2019 in New Delhi, India.Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
Image caption Onions are so ubiquitous that the government has been selling them at subsided rates

A drop in prices also affects the income of onion farmers, mainly in Maharashtra, Karnataka in the south and Gujarat in the west.

“Farmers see the onion as a cash crop that grows in the short term, and grows well in dry areas with less water,” says Dipti Raut, a journalist, who has been on the “onion beat” for years.

“It’s like an ATM machine that guarantees income to farmers and sometimes, their household budget depends on the onion produce,” she said.

Onions have even attracted robbers: when prices skyrocketed in 2013, thieves tried to steal a truck loaded with onions, but were caught by the police.

Why do politicians care about the onion?

Put simply, because the price moving too far one way or another is likely to anger a large block of voters, be they everyday households, or the country’s farmers.

Control rate onion vans seen after flagged off by Chief Minister of Delhi Arvind Kejriwal, at Delhi secretariat, on September 28, 2019 in New Delhi, India.Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
Image caption The Delhi government transported 70 vans full of subsidised onions

Onions are so crucial they have even featured in election campaigns. The Delhi state government bought and sold them at subsidised rates in September when prices were at their peak: chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, it should be noted, is up for re-election next year.

Meanwhile, Indira Gandhi swept to power in 1980 on slogans that used soaring onion prices as a metaphor for the economic failures of the previous government.

But why did onion prices rise this year?

A drop in supply, due to heavy rains and flooding destroying the crop in large parts of India, and damaging some 35% of the onions stocks in storage, according to Nanasaheb Patil, director of the National Agricultural Co-operative Marketing Federation.

He said the flooding had also delayed the next round of produce, which was due in September.

An Indian restaurant worker cuts onions for curries in New Delhi on September 11, 2015.Image copyright GETTY IMAGES

“This has become a fairly regular phenomenon in recent decades,” Mr Murugkar said. “Onion prices swing heavily with a small drop or increase in production.”

In fact, the shortage – and subsequent rise in prices – happens almost every year around this time, according to Ms Raut.

“It’s a vicious cycle and the trader lobby and middlemen benefit from even the slightest price fluctuations,” she added.

What’s the solution?

Ms Raut says more grass-root planning and better storage facilities and food processing services will ease the problem – and making a variety of cash crops and vegetables available across the country would also ease the pressure on onions.

“The government is quick to act when onion prices rise. Why don’t they act as swiftly when prices fall?” asked Vikas Darekar, an onion farmer in Maharashtra. He said the government should buy onions from farmers at a “fair price”.

Mr Murugkar, however, feels that the government should never interfere in “onion matters”.

“If you are interested in raising purchasing power of the people, they should not curtail exports. Do we have such a ban on software exports? It’s really absurd. A government which has won such a huge majority should be able to withstand the pressures from a few consumers.”

Source: The BBC

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