Raw material security key to RINL revival, say TU leaders
Trade union leaders emphasize that ensuring raw material security is crucial for the revival of RINL. They urge policy support and captive mine allocation to sustain operations.
Raw material security key to RINL revival, say TU leaders
Several prominent trade unions leaders from the city have opined that allotment of captive mines and merger with SAIL are key to revival of Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), the corporate entity of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant.
Co-chairmen of Visakha Ukku Parirakshana Porata Samitt Ch.Narsinga Rao, D. Adinarayana and others said that allocation of own mines to Visakha Steel Plant is the only solution. "We appreciate the resumption of production of Blast Furnace-3 on June 27. The right solution is for the Central Government to allocate captive mines to Visakha Steel. We demand that it be merged with SAIL at least," they told reporters.
The union leaders alleged that the Central Government is deliberately not providing captive mines, pushing Visakha Steel Plant into losses. Due to the lack of its own mines, Visakha Steel Plant has to spend an additional Rs 4,000 crore every year on sourcing raw materials.
The Central Government has decided to hand over the operation and maintenance of the production departments of Visakha Steel Plant to private companies. As part of this, tenders have been invited from interested contractors by July 12 to hand over the operation and maintenance work of two important departments of the steel plant, the Sinter Plant-1 and the Raw Material Handling Plant (RMHP), to private contractors.
They said iIn this way, the steel plant has been divided into 13 departments and all the departments are being handed over to private contractors. The permanent workers, contract workers and officers working now will not have any say in the production. The new contractors will hire their own men only.
Rao and Adinarayana said the contractors will run the steel plant for their own profits. In this way, the marketing department is already being run by the Tarapur Private Limited Company.
Since the Central Government decided to sell 100 percent of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, the relay hunger strike at Kurmannapalem, the entrance to the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, was conducted for a record 1583 days. On June 12, the relay hunger strike camp collapsed due to rain. Since then, the police department, with the support of the State Government, and the Centre have been preventing any hunger strikes from taking place in this camp, they bemoaned.
