North East India’s largest refiner Numaligarh Refinery Ltd said it will pump in over Rs 60 crore in various developmental projects under its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities during 2019- 20.
Of the total spending under the CSR head, the miniratna PSU in Assam’s Golaghat district has earmarked 60 percent funds for school education, health and nutrition programmes.
“In 2019-20, our CSR budget is Rs 62 crore. In this fiscal, a few aspirational districts are under consideration for undertaking developmental activities apart from other programmes,” NRL Managing Director S K Barua told PTI here.
The developmental programmes in these aspirational districts will be other than the “local areas” of the plant as defined in the CSR and Sustainability Policy of NRL, he added.
On the proposed areas where the company plans to spend the CSR amount, Barua said, “As per the Government of India guidelines, 60 percent of the budgeted amount needs to be spent on school education, health and nutrition.”
Apart from these fields, NRL will work on many other focus areas such as skill development and livelihood generation, rural development, sanitation, safe drinking water, Swachh Bharat Mission and promotion of sports, he informed.
When asked about last fiscal’s CSR spending, Barua said, “During 2018-19, the total CSR expenditure of NRL was Rs 54.85 crore. Every financial year, at least 2% of the average net profit made during the three immediately preceding financial years is earmarked for CSR activities.”
With implementation of the mega expansion project, the NRL is looking to ramp up its headcount by over 62 percent to nearly 1,425 in the next four years.
Apart from direct employment, around 12,000 indirect jobs will also be created during the construction stage of the new units for increasing its output.
Meanwhile, the company has already announced plans to diversify its portfolio and decided to enter exploration of crude oil within next few months.
