PANAJI
Days after imposing a first-of-its-kind condition mandating 80 per cent local employment while granting environmental clearance (EC) to a pharmaceutical project in Verna, the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) has clarified that the condition will not be made mandatory across all sectors.
SEIAA Chairman Dr Purushottam Pednekar said the employment condition would depend on the “situation, condition and kind of industries”, ruling out a uniform requirement for all project proponents seeking environmental clearance.
“It is not that we impose the same conditions to all project proponents while granting EC. It depends on the situation and condition and kind of industries,” Pednekar told The Goan, while declining to elaborate further. The clarification comes after SEIAA, at its meeting last month, granted EC to M/s Centaur Pharmaceuticals Private Limited for construction of an industrial shed at Verna Industrial Estate in South Goa, while attaching a specific condition that 80 per cent of the workforce at the proposed plant should comprise local Goan candidates. Under the condition, the company has also been directed to furnish detailed information on employment generation in its six-monthly environmental compliance reports. The pharma company has been asked to submit the total number of employees, category-wise details of skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers, the number of local Goans employed and measures undertaken to enhance local employment through recruitment and skill-development initiatives. The condition had raised interest as ECs generally focus on pollution control, environmental safeguards, mitigation measures and statutory compliance, while employment-related stipulations are rarely attached to environmental approvals.
The decision to link local employment with an environmental clearance had marked a significant departure from the conventional scope of EC conditions, bringing employment generation and recruitment of local candidates into the ambit of project-specific conditions.
The SEIAA decision assumes significance in the backdrop of instances where some pharmaceutical companies having units in Goa were found advertising for recruitment in Maharashtra and other States, raising concerns and forcing the government to intervene.
