New Delhi, Apr 22 (IANS): Mining major Vedanta on Wednesday said that it has so far spent Rs 151 crore in several initiatives in the fight against coronavirus ranging from providing preventive healthcare to local communities and distributing free meals to daily wage earners.

In a statement, the company said that it has reached out to over 7 lakh community members around its operations and plants in the country for preventing the spread of the pandemic.

Vedanta has set up a Rs 100 crore corpus for daily workers, preventive healthcare and welfare of employees and contract partners.

The company has so far provided more than 5.5 lakh meals to daily wage earners across the country. In addition, dry ration packets are being provided to 13,500 fisherman families at Worli Koliwada in Mumbai.

On their part, the business units have also distributed more than 21,000 dry ration packets to the local communities. Vedanta Foundation has distributed food grains to 300 families, comprising around 850 beneficiaries, at the Abhinav Leprosy School in Mumbai.

Vedanta has pledged 10 lakh meals to daily wage earners in Delhi, Mumbai and Patna. The daily wage workers have been hit the most due to the Covid-19 pandemic and resultant lockdown.

"Keeping in mind the poor condition of stray animals, who hardly have any access to food during the lockdown, the company is feeding more than 50,000 stray animals everyday. The company has so far provided more than 6.6 lakh feedings to stray animals in Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur and Pune," said the statement.

Vedanta Chairman Anil Agarwal said that India has shown tremendous resilience in fighting the impact of COVID-19.