Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh visited Bhilai, a day after 12 employees were burnt alive in a deadly blast at Bhilai Steel Plant’s Coke Oven unit, and sacked Chief Executive Officer (CEO) as anger against the deadly incident gripped the steel city on Wednesday.
Singh along with Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh and Minister of State for Steel Vishnu Deo Sai, reached Sector-9 hospital in a bid to calm down boiling anger among hundreds of workers of public sector steel giant SAIL’s flagship unit.
He announced a slew of compensation measures including Rs30 lakh to each deceased family besides a job. A compensation of Rs15 lakh would also be given to the seriously injured employees and Rs2 lakh to employees with minor injuries.
Steel Minister took stock of the situation at Bhilai in the poll-bound state and sacked Bhilai Steel Plant CEO, M Ravi and suspended T Pandya Raja, general manager (safety) and Naveen Kumar, deputy general manager (energy).
The sacking of plant officials came after prima facie it appeared that safety measures were compromised at Coke Oven Battery Complex No 11 during a scheduled maintenance job.
Chaudhary Birender Singh told media persons at Sector-9 hospital that apart from the internal enquiry committee constituted by SAIL, another high-level Enquiry Committee comprising of experts from across the country to go into the actual cause of the incident would be constituted by Ministry of Steel.