Chandrababu Naidu seeks permission to meet Vizag gas leak victims

Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N Chandrababu Naidu has written a letter to Andhra Pradesh DGP Gautam Sawang seeking permission to visit Visakhapatnam to interact with gas leak victims on Monday.

Naidu has been in Hyderabad since the imposition of lockdown. The former Andhra Pradesh chief minister is scheduled to board a flight to Visakhapatnam on Monday morning at 10.35 am, subject to the grant of permission by the authorities. He has planned to further go to the state's capital Amaravati via road.

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The Vizag gas leak

As many as 12 people were killed when Styrene leaked from the LG Polymers plant on May 7, while several hundred fell ill after inhaling the poisonous chemical at RR Venkatapuram near Visakhapatnam. LG Polymers in a statement on Monday said that it successfully completed the transportation of the Styrene Monomer (SM) inventory within the plant as well as in the styrene tanks that were at the port. There is now no Styrene monomer left at the LG Polymers plant in Vizag. Around 3,000 people were evacuated by National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams from Imhachalam, Gopalapatnam, Vepagunta. A total of 1000 people were said to have come in direct contact with the gas.

Jagan Mohan Reddy-led Andhra Pradesh government has deposited Rs 10,000 into each account of the people affected by the gas leak. Nearly 19,893 people residing in the affected villages have been compensated. CM Jagan Reddy had said the government is preparing to issue health cards to these families to provide better health facilities and monitor their health for which village health clinics are going to be established.

Days after its leaked vapour killed 12 people, about 13,000 tonnes of styrene from the LG Polymers plant at RR Venkatapuram near Visakhapatnam were shipped back to the company's headquarters in Seoul, South Korea. Irate villagers had staged a protest in front of the plant, with bodies of the deceased, demanding that it be closed down forthwith. The outrage from the residents must have led to the government's decision of shipping the entire load styrene to South Korea.

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