POSCO to shift mega project location

Bhuneswar: South Korean steel major POSCO, whose plans for the Rs 52,000-crore mega plant in Orissa have run into rough weather following anti-project activists taking its officials hostages on October 13, on Sunday said that it would rather shift the location of the firm than to invite a bloodbath.


POSCO Chief Executive Officer Ku-taek Lee had earlier announced April 1 as the date for beginning of construction of the 12 mtpa greenfield steel plant.



POSCO spokesman Sashank Patnaik, quoting the decision of the Board Of Directors, which reviewed the progress of its India project here on Saturday, said that it would prefer to shift to some other place than invite a 'bloodbath' in setting up the Rs 52,000-crore project, the country's largest FDI.



'POSCO would like to set up its project with cooperation from local people. If they do not agree with the project, the company may think otherwise,' Patnaik said.



Though the MoU for the project was signed on June 22, 2005, the company has been facing stiff opposition from the local people. The villagers under the banner of the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti on October 13 kidnapped and subsequently released four POSCO officials, including three South Koreans.



Meanwhile, the local ruling BJD MLA Damodar Rout who was silent over the issue since the beginning suddenly chalked out a series of programmes favouring the POSCO project.



'I have planned two meetings at Balitutha near the project site on October 24 and 27 to mobilise support for the steel plant,' Rout, a former cabinet minister in Naveen Patnaik ministry and secretary general of the ruling BJD, said.