MoD forms panel on Ordnance Factory Board restructuring

Nearly 80,000 workers from 41 ordnance factories in the country had gone on a strike in August against the proposed corporatisation of OFB.

The strike, originally planned for an entire month, was deferred in a week after assurance from Defence Ministry officials that a decision on corporatisation was still under examination and workers’ interests would be safeguarded. (Source: File)

THE Ministry of Defence has formed a High Level Official Committee (HLOC) to consult with defence workers’ federations on the proposed corporatisation of Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), and to make suitable suggestions to the government in this regard.

Nearly 80,000 workers from 41 ordnance factories in the country had gone on a strike in August against the proposed corporatisation of OFB. The strike, originally planned for an entire month, was deferred in a week after assurance from Defence Ministry officials that a decision on corporatisation was still under examination and workers’ interests would be safeguarded.

The three federations which led the strike were — All India Defence Employees’ Federation (AIDEF) affiliated to Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) of Communist Party of India, Indian National Defence Workers’ Federation (INDWF) affiliated to Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) of Indian National Congress and Bharatiya Pratiraksha Mazdoor Sangh (BPMS), which is the part of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) of the RSS.

A note by the MoD stated, “In order to examine various aspects related to the proposed restructuring of the OFB and to make suitable recommendations to the government after due consultation with the federations of the OFB, a High Level Official Committee under the chairmanship of additional secretary (defence production) has been constituted with approval of the Defence Minister.”

The terms of the reference of the committee will be, “To work out ways to safeguard the interests of employees in terms of wages, health facilities and other service matters due to converting the OFB into a public sector entity. To assess the requirement of budgetary support for salaries of the employees of the OFB. To assess concerns regarding future orders to the proposed new entity in the view of difficulties being faced in current set up. To wor out the roadmap for increasing the turnover of new entity from current levels to Rs 30,000 crore. To assess viability of some of the factories as public sector entities.” the note stated. The first meeting of the committee is scheduled on September 30.

Mukesh Singh, general secretary of BPMS, said, “Ordnance Factories suffer from workload fluctuations — sometimes very high volume or quantity is demanded for a particular item whereby we have to enhance our capacity, sometimes zero requirements and sometimes very low volume or quantity is demanded but we can’t change our installed capacity each and every time. This creates financial crunch in these factories and with such problems, no corporation can survive or sustain, and this will ultimately affect wages, allowances and other privileges of the employees. Hence, we are opposing the corporatisation… We hope that all these operational aspects and workers’ welfare are factored in.”

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