New Delhi, 14 September 2020: Mumbai based Indian multinational pharmaceutical company Alkem Laboratories failed to spend 22.16% of its prescribed Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) budget in the financial year 2019-20.
The company’s average net profit for the past three financial years stood at Rs 927.63 crore, taking its prescribed CSR budget to Rs 18.55 crore. However, the company managed to spend only just Rs 14.44 crore and Rs 4.11 crore was left unspent. The prescribed CSR budget for a company is calculated as the 2% of the average profit over the last three financial years.
Citing the reason for its non-compliance of CSR rules, the company said that it could not spend the required amount as it is in the process of evaluating long-term projects which shall benefit the society at large.
The company’s CSR committee is headed by its chairman Ranjal Laxmana Shenoy. Other members of the committee include Arun Kumar Purwar, Dhananjay Kumar Singh, Balmiki Prasad Singh and Mritunjay Kumar Singh.
The company undertakes its CSR projects through its subsidiary Alkem Foundation and also collaborates with external NGOs whenever considered expedient in order to make use of their expertise and their reach to the targeted beneficiaries of the respective programme.
Interestingly, even though the company failed to spend its CSR budget claiming that it is into long term planning, it has not done any detailed impact assessment of its initiatives.
In response to the question, have you done any impact assessment of your initiative? The company says, "In order to ensure that the CSR initiatives are directed towards the objectives and meet the desired results, it is important for us to know the impact that the project creates by monitoring the impact internally or through respective NGOs with whom we work. We regularly meet with the project coordinators, external agencies and stakeholders to assess the impact of our CSR projects. However, we are yet to do a detailed study specifically."
Company spent its CSR budget on healthcare, education, rural development and disaster management.
Its CSR projects:
Promoting healthcare services
The company has spent Rs 6.2 crore on maternal and child healthcare programme, nutrition programme, providing meals and nutritional supplements, health check-up camps, blood donation camp, mobile rural healthcare support, construction of dam for water availability, installation and maintenance of water-pipelines, water storage tanks, installation of RO water cooler & water ATM, construction and maintenance of public toilets etc.
Education initiatives
The company has spent Rs 76 lakh on providing education to underprivileged children in urban (slum) and rural areas, providing vocational and life skill training for children, supporting school infrastructure facilities for maintaining hygiene etc.
Rural development initiatives
The company spent Rs Rs 2.03 crore on (Support extended towards plantation of the vision of planting one million fruit trees in drought prone areas, support for park and herbal garden, provision of beds, installation of solar street lights in villages and training of tailoring for women through silai shiksha kendra, installation of HD-CCTV for road safety, construction and maintenance of community hall in villages).
Support for eradicating COVID-19
It spent Rs 5.43 crore on PM Cares Fund, distribution of protective kits and masks, ex-gratia for temporary workers .
