Con Edison, the main electrical supplier to New York City, which buys a quarter of its manhole covers from India, has said it is rewriting its international contracts norms to include safety requirements.The company has taken this step after seeing pictures of barefoot, whip-thin men, forging manhole covers at one of West Bengal’s many foundries, Shakti Industries in Haora. Shakti produces manhole covers for Con Edison, New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection and for departments in New Orleans and Syracuse, NY.When officials at Con Edison — which buys roughly 2,750 manhole covers a year from India — were shown the pictures by the photographer, they said they were surprised.“We were disturbed by the photos,” said Michael S Clendenin, director of media relations with Con Edison. “We take workers’ safety very seriously,” he said.“Contracts will now require overseas manufacturers to take appropriate actions to provide a safe and healthy workplace, and to follow local and federal guidelines in India,” Clendenin said. The photographs showed workers at Shakti wearing sandals and shorts carrying coke and iron ore piled high in baskets on their heads up stairs to the furnace feeding room. On the ground floor, other men, shoeless and stripped to the waist, were seen waiting with giant ladles, ready to catch the molten metal that came pouring out of the furnace. A few women could be seen working, but most of the heavy lifting appeared to be left to the men.AK Anand, the director of the Institute of Indian Foundrymen in New Delhi, said that foundry workers were “not supposed to be working barefoot”, but could not answer questions about what safety equipment they should have.Con Edison said it does not plan to cancel any of its contracts with Shakti after seeing the photographs, though it has been phasing out Indian-made manhole covers for several years because of changes in design specifications. Manhole covers manufactured in India can be anywhere from 20 per cent to 60 per cent cheaper than those made in the United States, said Alfred Spada, editor and publisher of Modern Casting magazine and the spokesman for the American Foundry Society. Workers at foundries in India are paid the equivalent of a few dollars a day, while foundry workers in the United States earn about $25 an hour. The men making New York City’s manhole covers seemed proud of their work. At the Shakti Industries foundry “there are no accidents, never ever. Period,” said Sunil Modi, director of Shakti Industries. “By God’s will, it’s all fine.”
