RINL’s strategic partnership with JSPL evokes mixed reaction from employees

-- RINL and JSPL enter strategic partnership, drawing mixed reactions from VSP employees and management.

VISAKHAPATNAM

The strategic partnership that Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), the corporate entity of Visakhapatnam, has entered into with JSPL (Jindal Steel and Power Limited), has drawn mixed reaction from the steel plant’s employees and management.

The partnership was disclosed through a media release by RINL’s chairman Atul Bhatt on Thursday and it was discussed by him with the employees and various trade unions of the plant.

While one section of the employees and management feels that the plant is going through a lean phase and that it has got the required oxygen to revive and do better and at least it will not close down, the other segments feel that it is a ploy to allow the private sector to take hold of the steel plant through backdoor entry.

It may be recalled that the Cabinet Sub-Committee had given a go-ahead for the 100% strategic sale of VSP on January 27, 2021, and it was announced by the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, during her budget speech, in the same year.

Since then the employees of the plant have been on an agitational path and all unions had come under the roof of Visakha Ukku Parirakshana Porata Committee, to stop the strategic sale.