Jharkhand : For any entrepreneur, adopting pollution control measures is a win-win move. And when one from Dhanbad, among the most polluted cities of the state and country, realises this, he deserves to be feted.
That’s exactly what has happened to Amitesh Sahay, a young entrepreneur of Dhanbad, whose efforts to minimise pollution from his hard coke unit at Govindpur, are fetching him accolades from the state industry department.
A former secretary of Union Club, Sahay received the good news via an email from the director of the state industry department, K. Ravi Kumar, on Thursday.
Amitesh will receive a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh, besides a scroll and a certificate at an award ceremony scheduled in Ranchi on Republic Day.
“I joined business in 1990 after completing graduation. I adopted pollution control measures at my unit, Jagdhatri Coke Manufacturers, in 2013. I took the help of Indian School of Mines for obtaining technology to minimise pollution,” said the son of renowned lawyer and JMM leader A.K. Sahay.
What Amitesh did was that he installed more than 40 dust absorber bags and increased the length of the chimney.
The immediate benefits of adopting the new technology was that he saved on production costs as some of the material, earlier released in the air, got trapped in the dust bags, enabling their reuse in the coke manufacturing process. There was another fallout, i.e. the safety of workers was enhanced.
“At hard coke manufacturing plants, coal is crushed to minuscule particles of size 0mm. These spread in the surroundings, leading to pollution and poor visibility. This, in turn, increases chances of accidents as labourers may fall in moving trolleys due to poor visibility. Hence, the pollution control measures adopted by me helped increase safety,” he explained.
Amitesh ended up winning the least accident safety award.
Among the other categories of awards given out to micro, medium and small scale industries were energy conservation, labour welfare, new innovative product, maximum profiturnover, electronic communication, environment management and sick industries turnaround.
Amitesh said he had applied for the award after spotting an advertisement published in a local newspaper in October 2015.
A selection committee, comprising representatives from departments of industry and micro, small and medium scale and the district administration, visited his Govindpur unit next month and inspected the safety and pollution control measures he had adopted.
“A recognition like this encourages entrepreneurs like us to work more transparently and abide by all government norms and regulations,” Amitesh said.
Dhanbad was 13th in a list of 43 critically polluted clusters of the country, according to a survey conducted by IIT-Delhi and Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in 2010, prompting the Union environment ministry to impose a moratorium on establishing new industries in the coal capital.
The moratorium, said Dhanbad regional officer of Jharkhand State Pollution Control Board (JSPCB) Dinesh Prasad Singh, was lifted on 17 September, 2013, which indicated that “conditions in Dhanbad had improved”.
(This appeared in Telegraph on January 23, 2016)