Chennai: With the all party meeting chaired by Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami deciding
to allow Vendata to re-open its copper smelting facility at Tuticorin for manufacturing oxygen for treating COVID-19 patients, the company has said it is committed to making the entire production of 1,000 tonnes available for the purpose of producing medical grade oxygen.
A statement issued by Vedanta said, ‘we are committed to making the entire production capacity of 1,000 tonnes available for the purpose of producing medical grade oxygen and are already working with experts on how best
to resolve the logistics of dispatching this to critical areas in Tamilnadu on priority, and subsequently across the nation.’
Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Monday chaired an all party meeting on allowing the Sterlite copper smelter plant at Thoothukudi to reopen to produce oxygen, the demand for which has been on the rise in view of the increasing Covid-19 caseload.
The principal Opposition DMK, BJP, Congress, CPI, CPI(M), and leaders of recognised political parties participated in the meeting held at the State Secretariat.
While a majority of the opposition parties favoured re-opening of the plant to produce oxygen for four months, Palaniswami said the State government’s intention was not to open the plant as it was the government which had closed the plant due to protests.
He also pointed out that the corona case load has been increasing daily and the oxygen requirement too was increasing.
The Opposition parties said the government could take over the plant as suggested by the Supreme Court and constitute a monitoring committee to ensure that the plant was functional only for producing oxygen taking
into account the prevailing Covid situation and the increase in demand for oxygen.
They also suggested that power supply could be restored to the plant for four months only to produce oxygen.
The meeting was held in the back of Sterlite coming forward to produce 1,000 MT of oxygen per day from the facility and had moved the Supreme Court to allow it to produce and provide oxygen for free at a time when many States were reeling under oxygen shortage to treat Covid-19 patients.
When the Sterlite plea came up for hearing, the State government said the plant could not be re-opened as it did not want to see yet another
firing incident to happen.