Editorial: Pharma factories or tinderboxes?

CHENNAI: India’s reputation as a pharmaceutical power has been left in tatters by the horrific blast at a factory in Sangareddy district near Hyderabad on Monday, June 30. The death of 44 workers due to the explosion of a chemical reactor at a plant operated by Sigachi Industries adds yet another notch to the country’s poor record of industrial safety.

The occurrence of such disasters all too frequently across the industrial spectrum makes a mockery of our aspiration to be a global manufacturing power. How can we ever attain that status if worker safety standards languish in the pre-industrial stage?

For a country that fancies itself as the pharmacy of the world, it is expected that safety protocols are tweaked to failure-proof levels at all factories manufacturing drugs and industrial chemicals. Evidently, that’s not the case if one goes by the frequency of such accidents, major and minor, at pharma and chemical hubs countrywide, but particularly in Hyderabad and Vizag.

While major accidents involving fatalities have occurred at locations across the country — Vizag (18 dead), Virudhunagar (14), Thane (10) and Roha (5) in Maharashtra — Hyderabad and Vizag head the scroll of infamy in respect of worker safety. These two hubs are home to more than 150 pharmaceutical companies each and account for 45% of India’s bulk drug exports.

The pharma corridor of Vizag-Anakapalli-Atchutapuram is particularly notable for the frequency of occurrence of bad events and for their routine whitewashing: three major disasters have occurred there in the past year, taking a toll of 25 lives. As for the Hyderabad hub, an accident at a pharmaceutical plant in Sangareddy district killed six workers just over a year ago.

The incident involved an explosion in an outdated chemical reactor that workers alleged was being operated despite known chemical leaks. Investigations revealed that the safety sensors at the plant were defunct.

Going by recorded incidents at registered factories alone, there are a minimum of 1,000 fatal accidents per year in India. Accounting for the unorganised sector and unreported cases as well, estimates of fatalities go up to 2,000 per year. Under-reporting remains a serious issue with non-registered factories, small-scale units, and unregulated sectors often eluding scrutiny when the incident is below a certain threshold.

It is deplorable that India, despite its big talk, does not maintain a single, publicly accessible central registry of industrial accidents, especially for the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors. Reporting is fragmented, handled in each state by the respective factory inspectorate, and uncollated to aid policymaking.

A centralised, real-time, publicly accessible industrial accident registry is critical for transparency and would facilitate safety enforcement. It would enable local neighbourhoods to report on incidents and allow whistleblower participation. In the US, the OSHA Accident Investigation Search system and the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) maintain detailed databases of all industrial incidents, causes, and recommendations.

It is public, searchable, and updated.

In comparison, the websites of state factory inspectorates tend to be very top-down, dispensing tender notifications and dos and don’ts. They stipulate, for instance, that there be an ambulance stationed at every factory dealing with hazardous chemicals and a full-time medical officer at every plant with more than 200 workers. It would be great if residents or employees themselves could monitor adherence to such rules and report violations to a central database that is open to all.