Neelachal Ispat staff request reopening of plant
Bhubaneswar: The employees of the Neelachal Ispat Nigam Limited (NINL) on Thursday urged the state as well as the central government to resume the plant’s operation and give their wages, which they are not receiving for the last three months due to the closure.
They have also requested the governments not to take steps for privatisation of the plant but to merge NINL with SAIL or RINL, which according to them will boost capacity of the steel unit and ensure proper functioning of the plant. Merger with SAIL or RINL will allow investment in NINL and will lead to future modernisation and expansion, an employee said.
To achieve SAIL’s capacity expansion target of 50 metric tonnes per annum by 2030 or RINL’s target of 16 metric tonnes per annum by 2030, SAIL or RINL need not to go for land acquisition for capacity expansion. “NINL has 2,500 acre undisputed land sufficient for expansion,” said Ajit Pradhan, general secretary, Neelachal Executive Association.
He said after the government took the decision of strategic disinvestment of 100% equity shareholding in NINL, severe liquidity crunch compelled suspension of production in July 2019. In March this year, major promoter MMTC also refused further funding and supply of imported coal, Pradhan said.
Pradhan added as a result of this, only one unit, which was running with bare minimum capacity — coke oven — shut down on account of paucity of imported coking coal from March. At present all the units are shut, he said.
The NINL is an integrated steel plant at Kalinganagar in Jajpur earlier run by the state and the central government jointly. It is one of the public sector unit steel plants of the state government in which it has a share of 32.47% through two companies Ipicol and OMC.
However, the employees said despite NINL being a profit-making plant, the government decided to privatise it last year. NINL has made remarkable achievements in terms of production, sales and growth in almost all areas and generated an operating profit of about Rs 14 crore, a member of the employees’ association said.
He said right now the plant is closed resulting in huge revenue loss of more than Rs 2,400 crore per annum to the government apart from more than Rs 400 crore per annum in the form of taxes and duties. Future of about 5,000 employees, mainly of local population, has plunged into uncertainty, he added.