Steel Plant Employees' Union affiliated to the CITU has pleaded that the Andhra Pradesh government as well as the centre should take urgent steps to allot captive iron ore mines to the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant and rescue it from impending disaster.

The plea was made by the union at a seminar organised recently.

Mr PK Das general secretary of the Steel Workers Federation, Mr Ch Narasinga Rao honorary president of the Steel Plant Employees' Union and others castigated both the state government and the Centre for starving the Vizag Steel Plant of iron ore despite the availability of reserves in the country.

In the key note address, Mr Das said “It is regrettable that both the AP Government and the Centre were ignoring the vital issue. Visakhapatnam Steel Plant is the only plant without captive iron ore mines which was pushing up the cost of production steeply. The other steel plants both in the private sector and the public sector were getting iron ore at INR 300 to INR 400 per tonne, the mining cost, whereas the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant was forced to pay INR 4,000 to INR 5,000 per tonne to the NMDC.”

He asked “How can the Vizag Steel Plant hope to survive and compete with other steel plants in such a situation? Its capacity is being expanded from 3 million tonnes to 6.3 million tonnes at a cost of INR 12,000 crore. Without captive iron ore mines, how can such an investment be justified?.”

He remarked that “While the public sector SAIL and RINL are desperately struggling for iron ore, private companies such as Posco, the Jindals, the Mittals and others had no problem whatsoever in getting ore. Iron ore was being exported freely from the country and mining mafias were ruling States such as Karnataka.”

Mr Das came down heavily on the Andhra Pradesh government for not allotting whatever iron ore reserves were available in the state for the plant and instead making allotments to private parties. He said that “The iron ore in Andhra Pradesh is leased away to the kith and kin of the late chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, while the steel plant's application was kept pending.”

He urged the government to take corrective measures immediately and allot iron ore mines somewhere in the State to RINL.

He also wanted an immediate ban on iron ore exports and renewal of iron ore mining leases to the SAIL plants.

(Sourced from BL)