Trade unions call for mass movement to prevent privatisation of VSP

Tirupati: Protesting against the privatisation of Vizag Steel Plant (VSP), members of various trade unions including CITU and AITUC staged a rasta roko here on Tuesday. They in one voice demanded to stop the move of the privatisation of the steel plant and hand it over it to Adani Group. Traffic was paralysed due to the rasta roko at the busy Ambedkar statue circle opposite the RTC bus stand causing inconvenience to the people. Speaking on the occasion, AITUC district presidents N Chandra Sekhar Reddy, K Radhakrishna and CiTU general secretary Kandarapu Murali alleged that the Centre was silently moving fast in the direction of privatisation of Vizag Steel Plant.

The Union government in a systematic manner was causing loss to the steel plant by bringing down its production capacity from 75 lakh tonnes to 45 lakh tonnes, stopping allotment of iron ore mines to the steel plant and also supply of iron ore through NMDC(National Mineral Development Corporation) on loan basis to the steel plant. Sadly, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Deputy Chief Minister K Pawan Kalyan remain silent emboldening the Centre to go ahead with the Vizag Steel Plant privatisation which was achieved after much sacrifice by the people of Andhra Pradesh, they lamented. They said recently the Union Ministers Kumaraswamy and Srinivasa Varma visited the steel plant and assured to develop it but nothing happened.

The only way is a mass movement to save the Vizag Steel Plant, the trade union leaders said calling upon the people of the State to come forward for a long fight to force the Centre to stop the privatisation of the steel plant. K Viswanatham, Y Raja, CH Siva Kumar, Sriramulu, N Siva, Srinivasulu Babu, Nagaraju, Nadiya, Manjula and Prameela were present.