Tata Steel is concerned about its employees now that the Environment Agency is aiming a few cameras at the coke gas plant 2 from this afternoon to detect pollution more quickly. “Our people must be able to work without worrying about privacy,” says a spokesperson. Tata wants more clarity about how the regulator will guarantee this.
The spokesperson: “It should not be the case that you can easily zoom in on an employee’s left eyebrow with those cameras. Or that the images are freely accessible to everyone. We expect care from the Environment Agency, but it is not clear to us how exactly sit.”
As of this afternoon, the North Sea Canal Area Environment Agency (OD NZKG) will aim a few cameras at the coke factory as a test. They do this at the air monitoring station Wijk aan Zee on the Reijndersweg.
The heated discussion around Tata Steel has recently often revolved specifically around the coke factory: recently there was an action led by the Party for the Animals in the adjacent Zee van Staal. The activists there demanded the closure of the coke factory.
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What happens in the Kooksgasfabriek 2?
In the coke factory, coal is turned into coke under great heat. That is fuel for the blast furnaces. Every time that goes wrong and polluting raw coke comes out of the oven of that factory, Tata Steel has to pay a fine.
It has already been raised twice, because that has happened too often. If it happens twelve more times (a fine of 100,000 euros each time) it will even come closure of the coke factory on the tablethe province said. According to Tata Steel, that would be it end of the business mean.
The OD itself says that it meets all the conditions to be allowed to use the cameras for surveillance. The service also says that it knows that ‘camera surveillance cannot simply be used everywhere’.
For Tata Steel, that promise is not enough: “We have regularly asked the Environment Agency in recent weeks whether clarification can be obtained about this, but in the opinion of Tata Steel this request has not been sufficiently complied with. We very much hope that the Environment Agency will can provide clarification in the short term, and find it remarkable and unfortunate that the Environment Agency cannot first provide the requested clarity before proceeding with this camera surveillance,” the company says in a message.
The cameras are not completely new, by the way: since last year, action group FrisseWind has been keeping the company as well Monitored 24/7.
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