HUL finally pays up!

In Sept’15, in this very same column, we have reported about how HUL had contaminated Kodaikanal, the hill station of Tamil Nadu. The plight came to light thanks to the rap video of Sofia Ashraf, “Kodaikanal Won’t”? HUL has contaminated a part of Kodaikanal irreversibly. Till 2001, HUL had a mercury thermometer factory in Kodaikanal and it had to be shut down due to environmental violations. The factory was working sensitive watershed forest. Some spots in the factory have 5000 to 10,000 times more mercury than naturally occurring background levels. Even today, the site continues to leak mercury into surrounding forests and Kodaikanal’s at full capacity from 1983 till 2001 during which time it discharged more than 1.3 tonnes of mercury into an ecologically lakes.  

Naturally, residents want this to be cleaned up and HUL has agreed to clean-up to a standard that will leave more than a third of the contamination in the remediated soil. In New York, a former mercury refining site is being cleaned to 5.7 mg/kg for future industrial use but HUL is agreeing to standards from 10 to 20 mg/kg.

What we now hear is that HUL has come to a financial settlement for an undisclosed sum with a group of 591 workers who had sued the company for health damage due to mercury pollution. As part of the agreement, HUL has agreed to provide ex-gratia payments to the 591 former workers/association members and their families.

HUL has provided a contingent liability of Rs 78.20 crore in its 2014-15 financial statement, up from Rs 69.29 crore provision the year before, towards “Other matters including claims related to employees/ex-employees, property related demands, etc.”

Now that financially matters are settled, it is time for HUL to clean-up the mess that it has created.