Relax cap on foreign workers: Steel,Power Mins

Ministries seek relaxation in existing limit of allowing maximum 40 workers under Project Visas regime

Anxious that ongoing and upcoming projects would need more trained foreign manpower to execute them,the Steel and Power ministries have sought relaxation in the existing cap of allowing a maximum of 40 foreign workers for various projects under the Project Visas regime.

In course of the recent meeting of the Monitoring Committee constituted to address the problems of implementation of the Project/Employment Visa regime chaired by Ajit Seth,Secretary Coordination,Cabinet Secretariat,and attended by top officials from Home,Power,Steel,External Affairs,Labour and Employment and Information Technology ministries,the Steel Ministry officials pointed out that the nature of foreign manpower needed for projects being executed in the sector were different as compared to other sectors. After extensive consultations with Mecon,Steel Authority of India Limited SAIL and industry experts,the ministry inferred that the cap of 1 per cent with maximum 40 foreign workers needed to be relaxed,especially for those projects where domestic utilities have executed their agreements with the foreign collaborators.

For new projects yet to be signed,the general guideline may be 10 per cent of the total skilled manpower deployed or 300 persons per million tonne capacity whichever is lower for the greenfield projects. As far as brownfield projects were concerned,5 per cent of the total skilled manpower deployed or 150 persons per million tonne capacity,whichever is lower, a top Steel Ministry official told The Indian Express. The move by the ministry seems to be aimed at facilitating foreign workers likely to be engaged by global giants like Pohang Steel Company Posco and Arcelor Mittal who have pledged to invest more than Rs 1,00,000 crore together for their respective projects. Already some utilities like Electrosteel Castings Limited have engaged Chinese workers including the semi-skilled ones.

The total manpower requirements of the project should be determined at the stage of conceptualisation of the project by the sponsoring authority,with labour requirements,both Indian and foreign and sent to the union labour ministry with a flow chart,the ministry officials suggested in the meeting. For ongoing projects with contractual obligations,deployment of foreign personnel may exceed the guidelines based on examination by the Labour Ministry on the merit of each case, they said and cited that in case of Electrosteel Castings the expert committee has assessed its peak deployment of 901 foreign workers,against their demand of 3,500. The project visa regime mandates steel and power utilities could currently engaged up to 40 foreign highly skilled and professional foreign personnel. The power ministry officials told the meeting that two units of 660 MW and above together should be treated as super critical technology project.

For a project where Boiler-Turbine-Generator BTG and its sub-systems are sourced from a foreign Original Equipment Manufacturer OEM,the maximum number of foreign personnel deployed may vary between 50-70, the officials suggested. They further pointed out that in a project where a BTG and its sub-systems and Balance of Plant are both sourced from a foreign OEM,the maximum number of foreign workers deployed might vary from 76-125.