Vizag steel plant employees to go on strike post March 25 if demands are not met

VISAKHAPATNAM: The Visakha Ukku Parirakshana Porata Committee on Thursday served a notice on Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), the corporate entity of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, to go on strike on or after March 25 against the move to privatise the steel plant.

Committee representatives led by Mantri Rajasekhar, D Adinarayana and Ch Narasinga Rao served the notice on the Chairman and Managing Director, RINL, at the plant administrative office in Visakhapatnam on Thursday afternoon.

In the strike notice, the committee demanded repeal of the approval accorded by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) for 100 percent strategic sale of RINL, scrapping of the inter-secretaries group constituted to study the strategic sale and scrapping of the MoU signed with South Korean steel giant POSCO in 2019 for construction of an integrated steel plant.

The other demands include suspension of the recent MoU with National Buildings Construction Company (NBCC) on redevelopment and monetisation of land parcels at Maddilapalem and providing permanent employment to all the left out rehabilitation card holders.

The employees have been staging protests for the past couple of days at Kurmannapalem, blocking traffic on the busy national highway protesting the move to privatise the steel plant. The employees called off their protest on Wednesday in view of the elections to the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) but on Thursday, they once again resumed their protests by staging relay
hunger strikes.

The committee is also planning to further intensify the agitation by giving a Chalo Delhi call and to block the national highways in all the 13 districts of the state in the coming days.