M A I N   N E W S

Bitumen: this one is not for the road
From Raman Mohan

HISAR, May 7 — Have you ever wondered why Haryana has such bad roads and also why its roads develop potholes at the hint of a shower? If you think it is resource crunch, you are dead wrong!

Here is the answer to the mystery. In one of the biggest scandals ever, about 70 per cent of the bitumen meant for building roads is being used to manufacture spurious industrial furnace oil worth several crores a year.

A lowly truck cleaner in Faridabad perpetrated the scandal in the early eighties. By the nineties, he had become not only a millionaire, but also a member of the Haryana Assembly. His success story inspired other influential politicians in the state to follow suit. This business is now controlled entirely by minions of almost every influential politician in the state with the active involvement of the police, the PWD and its contractors.

“Not only that, as a result of this, Haryana is virtually sitting atop a powder keg with scores of illegal units manufacturing this highly inflammable spurious oil on the outskirts of all major towns in the state.

A visit to several such units in the area revealed that spurious oil is manufactured without any fire safety measures posing a grave threat to life and property in the towns and villages in the vicinity. Sources of the Fire Department say an accident here could be worse than the Mathura blaze which claimed more than 20 lives last week.

Industrial furnace oil is widely used in steel rolling mills all over the country. Genuine oil is priced at around Rs 12 a litre and is considered excellent fuel for firing furnaces in heavy industrial units, mainly in the steel sector. Spurious furnace oil, however, costs less than half this price. The profit margin explains why this illegal industry has flourished.

The sources say that this illegal industry sells spurious oil worth about Rs 100 crore a year. Unemployed young supporters of influential politicians provide the manpower to this industry.

It is learnt that bitumen issued by the PWD for building roads is diverted wholesale to this illegal industry severely affecting the quality of roads. Hardly any bitumen is available in the open market. The PWD is the biggest consumer of this product which provides life and strength to the road surfaces. It is issued to contractors at very low prices.

Bitumen sold in the open market is comparatively very highly priced. Its use for manufacturing spurious furnace oil is, therefore, ruled out. Besides, this bitumen is of a different grade than the bitumen issued by refineries for road building.

The other major ingredient that goes into manufacture of spurious furnace oil is the discarded engine oil replaced in automobiles every 20000 km. Thanks to the spurious furnace oil industry, the rates of used engine oil have been rising steadily over the past few years. Trade circles say earlier they had problems disposing of this oil. Now no workshop would like a drop of this oil wasted.

Till the advent of the spurious furnace oil industry the use of this discarded engine oil was restricted to manufacture of spurious engine oil itself. However, the volume of business in the furnace oil industry has led to closure of spurious engine oil manufacturing units in the state, the sources said.

It does not take much by way of machinery to manufacture spurious furnace oil. The most important requirements are storage space for used engine oil and the finished product and massive contraption for heating bitumen. To begin with one has to invest in steel storage tanks like the ones used by petrol pumps to store fuel underground.

The process is simple enough. Used engine oil is stored for a few days to allow the dust and metallic impurities to silt. The oil is then drained out leaving the silt behind. Bitumen purchased from the PWD approved contractors is heated and mixed with the drained engine oil till the consistency of the mixture is almost the same as genuine furnace oil.

The entire heating and mixing is done in the open with smouldering or burning firewood only yards away. The Fire Department sources say these units are a major fire hazard. Because of the huge quantities in which the spurious oil is manufactured and stored, these units can be more dangerous than firecracker manufacturing units. None of the units visited by this correspondent had even a fire extinguisher on hand.

So far, so simple. But the hardest part is transporting the product within and outside the state without documents or licence. This is where the police help comes handy. At times policemen in uniform accompany the driver and the cleaner in tanker cabins.

The two biggest consumers of this oil in Punjab are Mandi Gobindgarh and Ludhiana. On the other side are Agra in Uttar Pradesh and a few industrial townships of Rajasthan in the vicinity of southern Haryana.

According to insiders, at times these units have to suspend production temporarily every time there is a change of guard in the district police. The recent police postings in the state could not have come at a worse time, they say, pointing out that the scorching summer makes the task of heating bitumen much easier and cheaper. A few such units on the Mirzapur Road here are passing through a bad patch for this reason.