ROURKELA: Officers and employees of Rourkela Steel Plant are apprehensive of favourable pay revision, which is pending for the last 10 and five years respectively, with SAIL showing negative growth.
Members of RSP Executives’ Association (RSPEA), as per the direction of Steel Executives’ Federation of India (SEFI), began a three-day meeting on Tuesday evening to draw the plan of action over their salary revision demand.
They decided to go to work wearing black badges on September 5 and sit on a dharna in New Delhi on September 12 along with officers of SAIL and other PSUs.
RSPEA president Bimal Bisi said the last pay revision for officers was done in January 2007 for 10 years.
They fear that the ‘affordability clause’ prescribed by the third Pay Revision Committee (PRC) of Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) would deprive 1,580 executives of RSP and 15,000 officers of SAIL units of a pay hike.
He said the ‘affordability clause’ should be done away as it mandates consideration of the last three years’ performance of SAIL. Bisi said SAIL suffered huge loss due to the unplanned capital expenditure of about `70,000 for capacity expansion in 2015-16 and the officers should not be blamed for it. Instead, SAIL should take into account its performance from 2007 to allow the executives to get 15 per cent hike on Monthly Guaranteed Benefit (MGB) as provisioned by the Union Government.
He said the “draconian” affordability clause stands to play spoilsport for public sector steel officers and after September 12, the RSP and SEFI would work out next course of action.
Their other demands include reducing income tax on house perks by half and gratuity enhancement from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 20 lakh as recommended by the third PRC.
RSPEA general secretary Padmanava Mishra and deputy general secretary Pankaj Priya said the association also demanded implementation of the pension scheme pending since January 2007. The SAIL’s Board of Directors for the second time approved it recently.
“Pension file was moved to the Ministry of Steel eight days back but funds constraint is a major hurdle as SAIL has invested about Rs 2,500 crore of pension fund elsewhere,” claimed Bisi.
Meanwhile, 13,470 non-executives of RSP are also apprehensive of pay hike which was finalised in January 2012 for a period of five years.
BMS-affiliated Rourkela Ispat Karkhana Karmachari Sangh (RIKKS) general secretary HS Bal said all trade unions are waiting for the DPE guidelines before working out demands for pay hike of employees.