Case Studies

The safety culture is strengthened with enhanced near miss reporting, introduction of exclusive contract workmen safety officers for large contractors and our appointed exclusive safety officer for pool of smaller contractors. We have also given thrust to vehicle/driving safety and initiated guidelines in this respect. These initiatives have promoted safe behaviour among contract workmen and reduced risks at our operations.

Our efforts have resulted in continuous reduction of the LTIFR from 25.21 in FY 2005 to 3.86 in FY 2009, a reduction of 84% in the last four years.

In addition to this, safety score card and physical condition tour audit system have been implemented to assess the safety performance. Safety score card is a point based system which mainly assess lead indicators like safety training, near misses reporting, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) compliance, analysis mechanism etc., to monitor the safety status of the unit on monthly basis. Physical condition tour is a field audit giving thrust to substandard conditions in areas of general work place conditions, facilities, material handling, equipment health, hazard control, emergency systems and PPE compliance.

For continuous improvement in our safety performance, we conduct internal and external safety audits that assess the functionality, adequacy and adherence of safety management system across all our operations, to further improve and make a benchmark performance year after year. The journey of continuous improvement continues.

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Tail Gas Treatment

At all of our smelters we have commissioned the Tail Gas Treatment plants to reduce their SO2 emissions from the acid plant stack by 50% (from 4 kg/tonne to <2 kg/tonne of sulphuric acid produced). We adopted the state-of-the-art technology developed by Mitsubishi Corporation, Japan at our zinc smelters to treat the gases using zinc oxide solutions and zinc sulphate solutions thus produced during the process is recycled back to the hydrometallurgical plant for recovery of zinc.

This advanced technology was selected in preference over commonly used and cheaper technology of lime scrubbing, which also produces sludge as a hazardous waste

Cansolv Technology

Our Ausmelt Lead Smelter at Chanderiya lead production Ausmelt technology is adopted. The off-gases from the Ausmelt furnace contain varying percentage of SO2, depending on the process cycle, which cannot be handled directly in acid plant due to its operational limitations. State-of-the-art technology provided by M/s Cansolv Technologies Inc., Canada has been adopted.

This process uses the fact that SO2 is absorbed in a cold amine solution and can be easily released from the solution when the SO2 laden solution is heated. By using this 'circle-type' process, the SO2 can be separated from the other gaseous parts of the SO2 gas. This separation of SO2 from the other gaseous compounds allows the release of the non-absorbed gases (without SO2) to the atmosphere and release of flow of concentrated SO2 gas to the sulphuric acid plant to convert these gases into sulfuric acid.

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"Definitely, road and electricity are basic amenities. HZL's contribution and the village collectiveness was the key to our transformation. It has taken us three -four years to evolve as an empowered village unit. The electricity connectivity for 94 of our households was ensured through involvement of each household including voluntary contribution for the same. The time is set for significant enhancement in the quality of our life." remarked Ganesh Dangi, village leader Godwa.

The finiteness of the efforts was validated by Operational Research Group, New Delhi who evaluated this village as part of our social audit to the entire 32 Model Village Development Program.

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We have launched 'Sterlite Bal Chetna Anganwadi Project', with the objective of holistic development of over 2 Lac under privileged children (0-6 year's age group) in 3,500 Anganwadi Centres, in phases, for improvement in health, pre-school education and linkage with formal education.

The project has been implemented 400 Centres catering to 13,000 children and capacity building of 1,350 government and project staff in Phase-I. There has been significant improvement in nutritional & health status; and the average attendance has increase by substantial 36%. We aim to scale up to 600 additional Anganwadi Centres in FY 2009-10 which will cater to 39,000 children.

Anganwadi Centre (AWC) - Hatiyahoda is situated in tribal village of Tidi, which is 35 Kms from Udaipur. It is the only source of pre school education for the tribal children (3-6 years age group) in the village. At the time of adoption of AWC, its condition was deplorable in terms of regularity & timely opening of the center, attendance of the children, distribution of supplementary nutrition, immunization, health and hygiene.

As per base line survey conducted in the month of April 2008, the average attendance was only 19%, cleanliness of AWC and children was extremely poor and even health check ups and immunizations were highly irregular. There was no community/parents' involvement.

Our team decided to intervene and set things in order. Ten months of successful journey of the Sterlite Bal Chetna Anganwadi (SBCA) Project, witnessed the following improvements:

• AWC started opening regularly in time, for 4 hours every day on all working days and all the AWC functionaries started attending the centre with punctuality.
• Continuous facilitation by SBCA project functionaries resulted in tremendous improvement in health, hygiene, attendance, enrollment, pre-school education, nutrition and community empowerment.
• Average attendance of the children increased from 19% to 71%.
• Regularity in maintenance of proper records.
• Significant improvement in cleanliness of AWC and children.
• Regular interactions with the parents and improved community involvement.

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