Protest at RINL-VSP admin building against MoU with Jindal

VUPPC workers protest at RINL-VSP admin building against Union Govt & Jindal Steel's MoU to privatise the plant.

Hundreds of members from the Visakha Ukku Parirakshana Porata Committee (VUPPC), which comprises 20 trade unions affiliated with various political and non-political parties, staged a protest at the RINL-Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) admin building at Ukkunagaram, here on Tuesday.

The workers of the plant, who boycotted their general shift (8 am to 5.30 pm) duties for nearly four hours, participated in the protest by raising slogans against the management of VSP and the Union Government. To prevent the agitators from entering the admin building, the police set up barricades with barbed wires around it.

The JMS Union General Secretary V. Srinivasa Rao said that the government had entered into an MoU with Jindal Steel and Power Limited for gradually privatising the Public Sector Unit.

“Its like a slow poison,” Mr. Rao alleged. “In our 30 years of experience, we have never experienced barbed wire barricades at the plant’s admin building. The government has started blocking us with such restrictions, police pickets, and rolling out red carpets for the Jindal team,” he added.

It may be mentioned that the RINL-VSP management recently announced the MoU with Jindal Steel and Power Limited to restart Blast Furnace-3 at the plant. Jindal is expected to invest around ₹800-₹900 crore in the restarting activity of the furnace, which was out of service from 2021. As per RINL’s official statement, it will be restarted from December 30, 2023.