CITU welcomes plans to revive sick PSUs

The trade union wing of Mamatas own party,Indian National Trinamool Trade Union Congress (INTTUC) was however,confident of her plans for the revival of these two units.

The president of the union,Sobhandeb Chatterjee said: The decision is a milestone for Bengals revival. The Left parties have been using this issue for political mileage only. Now,Mamata Banerjee has shown that she is willing to back the downtrodden and the workers.

Burn Standard was nationalised in April 1975 as it was declared sick at that time. Its two units one in Howrah and another in Asansol have a total of around 1,000 employees. It started manufacturing railway rolling stocks to cater to the increasing demand of Indian Railways. Today,Howrah works covers an area of 16.172 hectares with covered accommodation of 80,215 sq metres and Asansol-Burnpur Works has an area of 21 hectares with covered area of about 45,000 sq metres.

During the year,the company incurred a cash loss of Rs 147 crore accumulated to Rs 438 crore with a high interest burden of Rs133 crore annual amortisation of VRS expenses of Rs 5.13 crore.

Braithwaite Co Ltd,on the other hand,was proclaimed as a sick industry in 1992. According to the balance sheet available for the year 2001-2,its accumulated loss amounts to Rs 150 crore. In its Kolkata unit,200 permanent workers are still on the payroll of the company while 300 workers are employed on a contract basis.

Since the mid-80s,the Left Front has been handling these two cases. CITU claimed that the then chief minister Jyoti Basu,on many occasions,took up the case with the Union government.

In spite of not knowing how the Railway minister plans to turn around the PSUs,Kali Ghosh the CITU state secretary said,We would be very happy if the companies are revived.