The employees of Andhra Pradesh's Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) today notified the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL) of their intention to go on an indefinite strike.
The Visakha Ukku Parirakshana Porata Committee (VUPP) served the strike notice to the RINL, and said that the VSP workers would go on a strike on March 25 if the Centre did not withdraw its decision to privatise the historic plant by then. The committee handed over the notice to the RINL's Chairman and MD during a meeting at the plant's administrative office.
In their notice, the employees' demanded, among other things, that the VSP management thwart the privatisation attempt, and that it scrap its 2019 MoU with South-Korean steel giant POSCO which proposed the construction of an integrated steel plant. They also demanded that the management provide permanent employment to all those employees who had R-cards.
The workers of the steel plant have been protesting for weeks now. They are reportedly planning to escalate their agitation, and are likely to soon issue a 'Chalo Dilli' call. The protestors said that they have been "learning" from the farmers resisting the Centre's new farm Acts in Delhi, and that they too are prepared to fight a "long battle" to protect their plant. The VSP employees' union has even invited several farmer associations' leaders to Visakhapatnam on March 28 so that they can brief the plant's employees on how to proceed with their agitation.
In the midst of their surging protests, the VSP workers have found a supporter in Telangana IT and Industries Minister K T Rama Rao who announced yesterday that he would
back their struggle, and that he was ready to fly down to Visakhapatnam to participate in the agitation as well. To express their gratitude to the minister, the employees of the plant today offered 'palabhishekham' to his photo.
However, the announcement seems to have left veteran Congress Leader V Hanumantha Rao less than pleased. Expressing his displeasure at KTR, he asked why the minister seemed to lack similar concern for the farmers in his own state. He urged the farmers to teach KTR and the TRS regime a lesson for "deserting" them.
"If the TRS and KTR can raise their voices against the Centre's decision to disinvest in the VSP, they should also resist its new farm Acts which will bring economic ruin to farmers all over the country. Perhaps a defeat in the upcoming MLC elections will prompt the ruling party to take a stand on the matter," the leader said.
Another Congress leader who spoke on the matter was MLA Seethakka, who flayed the Modi government, accusing it of acting like a "salesman" selling away the assets of the country to the corporates. She demanded the immediate cancellation of the privatisation proposal.