20th February 2007

This trip begins with an Emirates flight from Manchester to Dubai, a plane change and then Dubai to Mumbai. Manchester to Dubai EK18 dep13:15 arr 00:10. Dubai airport is absolutely jam packed!

Dubai to Mumbai EK 504 dep 04:00 arr 08:15. When I land, it is a quick zip through immigration and then out into the throng to meet up with Rajiv Bazaz, the Managing Director of Stoneshippers India.

To transfer to the Domestic Terminal at Mumbai airport involves a 30 minute drive around the outside of the airport – the airport offers a transfer service, basically a bus that drives out of the domestic terminal into the Mumbai traffic and then drives to the other terminal. There must be a good reason why they don’t travel through the airport grounds instead of hitting the streets along with 5 million other vehicles!

Anyway we get to the terminal in good time and take a Kingfisher flight to Jaipur. The company that owns this airline is the same one that makes the famous Kingfisher beer …..

Mumbai to Jaipur dep10:40 arr 12:25. The flight is on time and we leave the terminal and meet up with our driver Maveram. The drive from Jaipur to Kota is about 4 ½ hours, and we stop at Maveram’s favourite truck stop in Tonk for a leg stretch and cold drink.

We get to Kota at just after 16:30 and head for the main Stoneshippers site to meet with the managers and talk through the site operations. I want to look through the accident book to check on the last entry – there was an accident on the 13th February where an operative had reported a fall. This was a minor incident requiring only on site first aid.

I examined the accident report which clearly showed what had happened; the cause of the accident (the operative did not follow the safe working procedure); and the resulting action, re-training. The report also contained a confirmation that this had been carried out.

This is the same procedure that we would follow in all of our UK factories but is not common practice in the quarrying industry in India and again shows how far ahead of the market Stoneshippers India are.

From here we walk to the Calibration factory to check on progress, especially the water treatment plant which is now fully up and running. Talking to the team in the factory they have just received the results of tests on the solid waste from the water treatment process that shows that the fine waste can be used to make bricks by a nearby factory. This is in stark contrast to the practice of all other factories in this area that simply pour out their waste into the street or waste areas.

The next photo not only shows the waste from the production processes – the white powder which is the residue from cutting and polishing Kota Blue stone but also the waste sandstone that is simply dumped on any spare ground.

In this case migrant workers are working though the spoil in search of slabs that can be made into paving that will be sold at a per piece price. Much of this area of Kota is littered with spoil heaps and vast areas of white sludge from the production processes.

On the way back to the car I take a quick detour into a competitor’s site. No photos unfortunately, but what we see is not good. A stone saw with no guard; the operative with no gloves, ear protectors or glasses cutting stone with his hands millimetres from a blade that is cutting through 50mm of stone paving slabs like a knife through butter. Guys ‘sitting’ on top of grinding / polishing machines that are on top of paving slabs, the machines are apparently designed to work like this. They must also be designed to take fingers and toes with them.

Back at the car we head off to the hotel the Umed Bhawan Palace. After a meal it’s off to bed for some sleep!

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