NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 16: The Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) today condemned the Cabinet's decision to initiate process of disinvestment of three steel plants under public sector SAIL and other captive power and fertiliser plants.However, an official of a Mumbai-based trade union criticised the government move to spend a whopping sum of Rs 8,454 crore for the bail-out of SAIL. ``This is tax-payers money. The government is rewarding the company for inefficiency and mismanagement. This is even worse than the bank bail-out. It is better to privatise than spending a huge sum on a white elephant. The government should stop such expensive bail-outs. It's not in the interest of people,'' he said.Other trade unions refused to comment on the bail-out package. However, private sector players flayed the government's move. ``The government move to waive the SDF loan is not in the right direction. There should be level playing field in this matter. Why is the government waiving only Sail's loan?'' said an official of a private steel company. The decision to sell Alloy Steel Plant, Salem Steel Plant and Visvesaraya Iron and Steel would practically end the public sector participation in alloy steel making and hand over the said important segment of country's market to foreign players, a CITU release said in Delhi today."It is clear from the cabinet decision that the government is hell bent to destroy country's steel making capacity to oblige the multinational companies (MNCs) operating in the concerned fields," it said. Demanding reversal of the decision, CITU has called upon the steel workers and all the trade unions in the steel industry to resist the decision both at plant level and all India level.Last year, Sail had invited bids for divesting upto 49 per cent stake in power plants but the process had to be stopped pending government approval. Sail has 2X60 mw captive power plant at the Rourkela steel plant and the central power training institute at Rourkela, 2X50 mw captive power plant at durgapur steel plant, 2X55 mw plus 12 mw back pressure turbine captive power plant and 3X60 mw power plant at Bokaro.The company had earlier said that the divestment of non-core activities would be through selling stake to a joint venture partner by creating a subsidiary. Other proposals for business restructuring included divestment in alloy steel plant at durgapur, Visveswaraya Iron and Steel Ltd (VISL) at Bhadrawati and fertliser plant at Rourkela, sources added.Sail, which had a peak net worth of Rs 8,400 crore about three years ago, had witnessed an erosion of about Rs. 3,600 crore due to losses in the last two financial years.
