Nearly 700 workers at Vedanta Electrosteel (ESL) in Siyaljory, Chandankiyari in Bokaro district have been reportedly removed from their jobs amidst lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic.
Protesting against the ESL management, BJP legislator (Chandankiyari) Amar Kumar Bauri went on a day long hunger strike on Friday and threatened for a massive agitation soon after the lockdown is over.
Bauri said that the company has disregarded the instructions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “PM has appealed to all public enterprises, private companies, industrialists not to lay off any employee during the lockdown but this has no effect at ESL,” he said.
Branding it as an “inhuman behavior” of the company the MLA asked Deputy Commissioner Bokaro Mukesh Kumar to intervene in this matter at the earliest. He also requested the Jharkhand government for a quick intervention, for the rights of the workers.
The MLA urged ESL management to put back those workers immediately on work. “Retrenchment during lockdown will not be tolerated. There will be fierce movement in the area after the lockdown if the ESL management did not pay any heed,” said Bauri.
Meanwhile, an ESL spokesperson said, the company has been cutting production since past few months and as result workers have been asked to leave.
The number of employees working inside the plant has been reduced to one-third so that essential services can run smoothly. While two-thirds of the employees have been instructed to work from their homes, informed Vivek Anand PRO of ESL.
“We are all aware of the enormous challenges and threat that we are faced with in these testing times,” he added.
Vedanta ESL has been adhering to COVID-19 guidelines as issued by the Central and State Government from time to time. Health experts and government advisories have underlined social distancing as the best means to prevent the spread of the virus.
In the interest of our workforce, we have hence taken measures to adhere to Social Distancing norms by scaling down our operations and running only critical units of the plant with reduced capacity, and ‘temporarily’ suspending some of the finishing lines during the period of lockdown, to avoid gathering at the workplace. We have accordingly identified a list of workers who need not come to work for now, and stay safe at home. We would like to put on record that this is a Safety and Health Advisory issued by the Management, and does not tantamount to any job loss or pay cut during these tough times, it said in a company’s email.