Vedanta stripped of safety awards

Leading mining group Vedanta Resources has been stripped of international safety awards amid claims that it won the prize without declaring that a chimney collapse at one of its sites had killed at least 40 workers last year,a media report said today.

Awards to Vedanta have been immediately withdrawn by the British Safety Council in response to findings thrown up by a broader analysis of deaths of workers at all FTSE 100 mining groups last September – one of the worst industrial tragedies in India’s recent history,The Observer reported.

The Observer analysis found that 154 work-related deaths have been disclosed by London’s largest multinational miners in their latest annual reports and other shareholder filings.

According to the report,all 12 London-listed firms have “zero fatality” targets,but only Mexico’s Fresnillo achieved this last year.