The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Help on the way to retrenched PSU staff

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 27, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Help on the way to retrenched PSU staff

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, JUNE 26. The Government is committed to providing all necessary support to help retrenched PSU employees in getting re-employment or self-employment.

Speaking after inaugurating a two-day national seminar on "Redeployment of Rationalised Employees of Central PSUs" here on Saturday, the Union Minister for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprise, Santosh Mohan Dev, said that he was distressed to find that many former PSU staff were being harassed with delayed PF and VRS payments. He promised to speed up the process of paying all dues to those employees who are laid off due to re-structuring and also intensify the process of retraining them for other productive work.

He said 30,000 former PSU employees had benefited from the existing Counselling, Retraining and Redeployment (CRR) programme of the Government since 2001. This year, the benefit was being extended to 32,000 laid off staff of PSUs, Mr. Dev announced. He expressed disappointment that only 45 per cent of the laid off staff had been successfully re-deployed and called for increasing the "success rate" to above 50 per cent.

He explained that PSU restructuring was essential to maintain their efficiency and financial health and added that the country's economic health depended on the existence of healthy PSUs. Most PSUs which were classified as "sick" suffered from excess manpower and this needed to be reduced if they were to be turned around. But he reiterated that special safety measures would be added to the present programmes to help those being retired.

He clarified that the present Government would not privatise profit-making PSUs while every effort would be made to "turn around" loss-making PSUs. Privatisation would only be considered if these PSUs remained "sick" despite efforts to revive them but the interests of workers would be protected, Mr. Dev promised.

Earlier, five retrenched employees of Hyderabad-based PSUs spoke about their experiences of starting self-employment ventures after CRR training. Chukka Kondaiah, Principal Director, National Institute of Small Industry Extension Training (NISIET), spoke about the initiatives taken by them for retraining and redeploying retrenched staff while A.K. Rath, Joint Secretary, Department of Public Enterprise, gave an overview of the CRR programme in the country.

The present seminar is being jointly organised by the Department of Public Enterprise and NISIET. The Minister later inaugurated an exhibition of products made by small enterprises run by former PSU employees.

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