As many as 31 employees of the Nilachal Ispat Nigam Limited (NINL) who were deployed to a Chhatisgarh based steel plant which is a CPSU faced stiff resistance there and returned to Odisha without being able to join work.
According to information available, 31 employees, most of whom are company executives, belonging to officer cadre of NINL, following closure of Kalinga Nagar unit, were deputed to work in Chhattisgarh in Nagarnar Steel plant near Jagdalpur, a steel project of NMDC. They returned to Odisha in a humiliating condition as the local people in Chhattisgarh reportedly did not allow them to join in their work due to public protest against decision of privatisation of Nagarnar unit.
The 31 officers of NINL were deputed to join in the Chhattisgarh unit in the middle of December who after a weeklong wait returned to their home State on December 22 due to local resistance.
According to some people, the MMTC (a Government of India undertaking) which is major stakeholder of NINL should not have sent these officers on deputation without sufficient ground preparation and home work.
It may be mentioned here that, the NINL is promoted by the MMTC Limited while the Nagarnar steel project which is yet to be commissioned is promoted by NMDC, a Government of India undertaking. The NINL was established with MMTC as major stakeholder with other partners like, Industrial Promotion and Investment Corporation of Orissa limited (IPICOL) and several other agencies. It is a 1.1 million tone plant at Kalinga Nagar established about 2 decades back as a public sector steel plant.
Unfortunately, production in NINL has been stopped for last 8 months as result of which, more than 1,000 employees are without salary for last eight months creating serious discontentment among its staff.
The NINL management under the advice of the Steel Ministry had decided to redeploy some of the staff of NINL in the Chhattisgarh project, a sister concern.