First bag of cement leaves Salboni plant

17 July 2017

Over 18 months since it was kicked off by chief minister Mamata Banerjee on January 6, 2016, JSW Cement Ltd in Salboni, a unit of JSW Group, commercially released its product on Wednesday.

Sajjan Jindal’s son Parth was present on the factory premises when the first truck loaded with cement was dispatched from the factory to Tarapith.

When contacted, director of JSW Cement Biswadip Gupta told that this was one of the fastest construction of greenfield plants in the country in recent times. “We have not lost a single man-day during the construction of the project,” he added.

However, the land losers at Salboni were not too happy with the commencement of cement production. The secretary of JSW Landlosers’ Welfare Association, Pariskar Mahato, said that they had not received any invitation to the inauguration of the project.

“There is resentment among land losers. We should get jobs in the project, but the management is recruiting people from outside,” he added.

The inauguration of the 2.4-million-tonne cement plant had been attended by Sajjan Jindal along with his family in January 2016. The cement project was set up on 150 acres. Initially, the group came out with a proposal for setting up a 10-million-tonne steel project at an investment of Rs 35,000 crore. Besides steel, the project included cement and power in 2008. However, the project was stalled owing to recession in the steel sector. It was revived in 2015 as a cement and power project.

Source-TOI