Visakha Steel Plant privatisation must be stopped

Vijayawada(NTR district): Demanding the stoppage of Visakha Steel Plant privatisation and seeking the State government's intervention in this regard, Visakha Ukku Parirakshana Porata Vedika organised a round table meeting at Balotsav Bhavan in Vijayawada on Wednesday.

TDP State general secretary and former Minister Devineni Uma Maheswara Rao, CPI State secretary K Ramakrishna, CPM State secretary V Srinivasa Rao, YSRTU State secretary P Goutam Reddy, Congress Party Vijayawada city president N Narasimha Rao, AITUC State general secretary G Obulesu and others participated in the meeting and expressed their views.

The meeting passed a resolution that insisted that both the Centre and State governments should run the plant with 100 per cent capacity and asked the State government to participate in the bidding. The participants said that due to lack of a Special Category Status and not implementing bifurcation assurances, the State is losing many opportunities, which is leading it into disorientation.

If the Central government privatised the Steel Plant at this stage, the State would lose many sources, they felt. 'Visakha steel plant has earned a profit of Rs 948 crores. The amount of this profit was paid to the banks in the name of debt repayment without using it to buy raw material. Owing to lack of money to buy raw materials, production has been drastically reduced. Blast-furnace-3 has been completely shut down from January 2022. Production of many other segments has also been reduced. As a result, Visakha steel was pushed into losses. The Central government should be responsible for these losses,' the members stated. They further said that the State government should put pressure on the Centre to participate in the SAIL bid.

Bids have been invited from those interested in buying remanufactured steel to supply the raw material to make the Visakha steel plant 100% productive. So far 22 companies, all are private, have shown interest. The date for filing bids was extended till April 20. All the private companies including Jindal Steel have come so far. There is not a single government company, they informed. The political party leaders made it clear that they would stage massive protests across the State from May 3 under Visakha Ukku Pari Rakshana Porata Vedika.