Telangana: Urea production resumes at RFCL after more than a week
Ramagundam Fertilisers and Chemicals Limited (RFCL) in Telangana’s Peddapalli district resumed production after remaining closed for more than a week following a leakage in its ammonia pipeline and technical problems.
Hyderabad: Ramagundam Fertilisers and Chemicals Limited (RFCL) in Telangana’s Peddapalli district resumed production after remaining closed for more than a week following a leakage in its ammonia pipeline and technical problems.
With the plant reopening after repairs, urea production has resumed at the public sector company.
Officials said they had taken all measures to ensure that technical problems do not recur.
They said they were making every effort to step up the production to meet the urea demand for the current agricultural season.
The urea production came to a halt on July 9 following the shutdown of all units of the plant due to a leakage, which reportedly occurred due to technical problems.
As the problem could not be rectified, the plant was shut down. The officials had said that it might take at least one week to resume production.
The shutdown has brought to a halt fertiliser supply to Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and five other states, raising concern over supply to farmers during the ongoing Kharif crop season.
This was the second time this year that an ammonia leak has forced the RFCL plant’s shutdown. The plant was closed for a week in March.
The plant has a capacity of 3,850 tonnes per day, but it had been operating at 50 per cent capacity for some time due to gas shortages due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
As RFCL is the only source for Telangana, the state government has been demanding that the Centre allocate the entire urea output from the plant to Telangana.
Peddapalli MP Gadam Vamsi has accused the Centre of neglecting RFCL.
He has also demanded relocating the corporate office of RFCL from Noida (Uttar Pradesh) to Ramagundam. He stated that despite Ramagundam being the core operational base with the majority of manpower and technical workforce stationed at Ramagundam, the proposal to shift the corporate office has been deferred.
The Congress MP said that Telangana, and particularly Ramagundam, is being denied its rightful administrative and institutional share, even when the region contributes significantly to operations.
