Delayed salaries add to VSP employees’ concerns

Visakhapatnam: The financial condition of Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), the corporate entity of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, is deteriorating day by day.

Adding to the concern of the employees, delayed salaries are another major challenge they faced for the first time ever since the inception of the plant.

The employees’ bank accounts were credited with half of their pay on May 21, while the second part of the pay was received two days later, that too only to non-executive cadre.

Employees express concern over the management following a new system of depositing the salaries in two different phases that stretched till the month-end.

Unlike the initial years of VSP’s inception where the management credited pay on or before 1st of every month, it is a different scenario now. However, in 2017, the salaries were delayed for five days for varied reasons. Barring that year, salaries were never delayed for the employees.

But, 2024 seems to be a difficult year for the employees as the management is not giving a priority to paying salaries to the personnel, lament a section of employees.

Keeping the festivals like Sankranti and Ugadi in view, the RINL paid salaries on time in January and April.

Apparently, the RINL has to allocate around Rs.200 crore per month for salaries. But the company is unable to allocate required funds to clear salaries.

Demanding their monthly pay, trade unions, including INTUC, recently staged a day-long dharna at Ukkunagaram.

As a result, half of the salaries were paid to the non-executive cadre the same day. However, executive cadre officers are still waiting for their turn.

The management had promised to deposit the second installment of pay to the non-executive cadre on Thursday and later paid as promised.

At a time when the employees are agitating against privatisation of the VSP on one hand, they are also staging a fight for the pay revision on the other. Delayed salaries add to their concerns for the past few months.

“As per the Labour Act, employees have to be paid salaries by 7th of every month. In case of any delay, the unions have the option to file a complaint against the management. If the pay is not received even on the 10th of the month, legal action can be taken against the management,” said Neerukonda Ramachandra Rao, INTUC president.

Expressing concern, representatives of Visakha Ukku Parirakshana Porata Committee D Adinarayana, Mantri Rajashekhar and Varasala Srinivasa Rao demanded that Visakhapatnam Steel Plant’s management should give top priority to clear salaries like earlier to the employees.

Trade union leader N Rama Rao demanded that the CMD of RINL should resign if he could not resolve the employees’ concerns and continue to fail in paying them salaries on time.