Sir: This is apropos the news item ‘ECC approves Rs 2.9 billion bailout package for Pakistan Steel’ (Daily Times, September 8, 2013). This is primarily to make payments to protesting employees who have been without salaries for the last three months. Apart from this, the steel mills owe billions of rupees to the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC), Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) and Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC), which are also pressing hard for the payment of arrears. Pakistan Steel has already been provided with Rs 41 billion during the past five years in different packages without any result only to see its production restricted between 10 to 12 percent. The mill was designed to produce 1.1 million tonnes of steel annually but this target was never achieved. This is causing a loss of Rs one billion each month. The bailout packages have nothing to do with production as the money is hardly sufficient to meet salaries and other administrative expenditures. There are three major reasons behind its downfall. First of all, Pakistan Steel is still without a proper chairman so how can we run the biggest industrial unit of the country by appointing non-professionals and by continuously changing the chairman every second day. Secondly, overemployment is touching around 16,000 yet we do not hear of any interference by the unions.
All successive governments turned this mill into an employment haven and systematically destroyed this most important industrial unit of the country. If the government really wants to save this costly asset, three immediate steps have to be taken. First and foremost, it must appoint a full time professional chairman, ban the union immediately, reduce manpower to 50 percent and bring the production to at least the 70 percent mark to break even. This current bailout package and follow up packages will go to waste unless the root cause is tackled
MUKHTAR AHMED
Karachi