Iváncsa battery factory might have started production earlier than planned - Free Europe
Although the battery factory in Iváncsa is not yet officially operational, the company's management has already started "the optimisation of the company bus services" on 6 November, which will see only 68 workers' buses a day to the factory, instead of the 86 that used to operate before, and eighteen will be discontinued, Free Europe has learned.
According to the site, the factory's management justified this by the fact that all the stops where fewer than five people got on were closed. Thus, not only specific destinations were eliminated, but also the number of stops on the remaining services was reduced.
The site reports that commuters come to work to the Fejér County settlement from as far as 90 to 100 kilometres away, not only from Transdanubian settlements, but also from the Danube-Tisza region. Many of the people living along the route of the discontinued services will then have to use regular public transport.
However, according to one source, there are extreme cases where a worker has to leave the night before on the last bus, spend the night in an intermediate village and catch the first bus to Iváncsa in the morning, in order to get to the factory by 6am. According to information from Free Europe, there are currently three shifts at the factory, one of which lasts 12 hours, from 6.00 to 18.00. The service restrictions are most likely to cause problems for workers in the latter shift, who arrive home late after the working day ends at 18.00 and return at dawn.
The three shifts already employ around 1500 people. Afther their previous article on 3 November abou SK ON Hungary (the Hungarian subsidiary of SK ON, the South Korean battery company), which operates the factory, sent a statement to the portal saying that production is not yet underway at the factory because it does not have the official permits, so "machine set-ups and machine installation are in progress". However, according to a source, the workforce of around 1,500 workers, organised in three shifts, suggests that there may be more extensive activity at the plant.
It also emerged last week that the factory's owner might build a battery testing and destruction plant next to it.
In July, the factory was fined nearly HUF 14 million by the Fejér County Government Office for violating labour and chemical safety regulations and not declaring the presence of hazardous chemicals on the site, which resulted in a number of workers falling sick. Nevertheless, the environmental permit for the factory was issued by the County Government Office a few weeks later.
Meanwhile, neither the planned siding for the factory nor the road linking it to the M6 motorway have been completed, and both are only at the public procurement stage. In addition, neither the planned protective forest between the factory and the municipality nor the noise barrier have been started. Free Europe inquired at SK ON Hungary about the matter, but had not received a reply by the time of publication of this article.
Cover photo: Getty Images
