LUXEMBOURG:
ArcelorMittal SA, the world's largest steelmaker, has charmed investors by
turning around rusting steel plants across the world and reporting billions of
dollars (euros) in profit.
The
charm has not worked on environmental activists who say the company has not done
enough to tackle pollution from steel mills and mine safety, and who brought
their campaign to the company's annual meeting on Tuesday.
Campaigners said the company
hasn't tackled pollution, health and safety and labor issues at plants in the
United States, Kazakhstan, the Czech Republic and South Africa.
These are more than
``occasional blips,'' said the report from Friends of the Earth Europe, CEE
Bankwatch and others. ``They represent the logical conclusion of the company's
strategy of buying old, heavily polluting steel mills and taking cost-cutting to
its extreme.''
ArcelorMittal
was quick to respond, scheduling a press conference immediately after the
shareholders' meeting to show it is serious about its responsibility to the
environment and the communities where it operates.
``We want to enter into
dialogue,'' board member Michel Wurth told reporters. ``We know for our
shareholders that corporate social responsibility is important ... Sustainable
profitability is only compatible with sustainable behavior.''
The company insists that it
always operates in line with local rules and goes beyond that in many places _
easily leading the steel industry in the efforts it makes, it says.
ArcelorMittal plans a report
at the end of June to chart what it is doing _ and what it still needs to do _
to deal with environmental problems in an industry that belches carbon dioxide
emissions and toxic gases and creates tons of waste in the search for metal.
The company acknowledges that
many of the plants snapped up in the former Soviet Union in the last few years
by Mittal Steel Co. _ which took over Arcelor SA after a bitter takeover battle
in 2006 _ have a lot of catching up to do with less polluting facilities in
western Europe.
``Clearly
there is more to do in recently acquired facilities,'' said chief financial
officer Aditya Mittal. ``In the past they've underinvested and there's a
catch-up there.''
Dana
Sadykova of the Kazakhstan campaign group EcoMuseum was harsher, saying the
company still needs to deliver on older promises to upgrade mining equipment
that date back several decades. In January, 30 miners were killed in a methane
explosion at an ArcelorMittal coal mine in Kazakhstan, barely two years after
another mine blast in the country killed 41.
``The results on the ground
just aren't good enough,'' she said. ``It is vitally important that senior
international management take responsibility for improving the local
conditions.''
Wurth said the
company was not to blame for the second blast, caused by an accidental rock fall
blocking tunnels. The earlier fatalities were blamed on workers failing to
follow safety advice.
The
steelmaker is now spending US$300 million (euro194 million) to modernize the
mines and train workers, he said, stressing that it took time for improvements
to take effect.
But
ArcelorMittal's critics are also attacking the company's lack of openness _ a
sore point on a day when chief executive Lakshmi Mittal formally joined that
role with the chairman of the company's board, backing away from a commitment to
corporate governance that would keep both jobs separate.
The campaigners' report called
on the company to publish existing reports on its environmental impact and carry
out more research.
Liz Ilg, an
activist at Ohio Citizen Action, said the steelmaker has refused to respond to
concerns of people near the Cleveland plant it bought in 2005 _ including
letters from more than 500 doctors and nurses detailing health problems they
linked to air pollution.
She
says the plant manager last met with campaigners in 2005 but the company had
since decided to ``cut that dialogue off and address it only with public
relations and no longer with decision makers.''
ArcelorMittal spokeswoman
Nicola Davidson said the company would encourage managers to talk to local
people directly.
Aditya Mittal
praised the U.S. steel operations, saying ArcelorMittal won an Environmental
Protection Agency gold medal this year, the first one ever for a steel company,
``so clearly we are doing something right.''