18 hours ago
Visakhapatnam Steel Plant invites bids from private agencies to maintain its two core units
For the first time, the country's first shore-based integrated steel plant Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited -Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (RINL-VSP) has decided to appoint private agencies to handle the maintenance of two core and major units, the Sinter plant and the Raw Material Handling Plant (RMHP), according to the latest notification of expression of interest (EoI) issued by the RINL.
The name of the works 'Comprehensive Technical Management & Maintenance of Sinter Plant-1,' and 'Technological Upkeep of Wagon Tipplers, Total Mechanical Maintenance with Housekeeping of RMHP Tipplers and Stacking Stream.'
Interested bidders should respond to the steel plant offer by July 10 (for RMHP) and July 11 (for sinter plant) and the bids will be opened the next day. The process will take at least three to four months to complete.
Currently, around 2,000 personnel, 700 odd regular employees and contract workers, are operating these two units. In future, the maintenance including the employees and their salaries, will be completely handled by contract agencies.
According to sources inside the steel plant, the plant management has taken this bold step in view of the targets set by the government, the inability to achieve the expected output from the existing workforce and as part of cost-cutting measures.
'The existing regular staff, who are getting high salaries, are not cooperating for several reasons, which is not right to discuss openly. Every month, staff are retiring and no new staff have been recruited. The recruitment has been stopped several years back. Since these departments (sinter & RHMP) are one of the key operational areas of the steel plant, the management has decided to go for outsourcing the maintenance to achieve desired results. The workforce will come under the control of private individuals, and the steel plant will have no direct link with the workforce once the agreement is done, ' a top RINL-VSP official told The Hindu.
Apart from the Sinter and RHMP plants, RINL has several other major operational units such as coke ovens, thermal power plant, blast furnaces, steel melting shops and rolling mills. All these plants were commissioned between 1989 and 1991, and have been operational since then.
In the case of RMHP, there are stockyard beds used for storing and catering to various raw materials to the customer segments as per the demand. There are 14 beds in the Ore Handling Plant, 4 beds in the Iron Ore Storage, and 15 beds in the Coal Handling Plant. Since these raw materials are stored in open stockyards, during the rainy season due to high water content the raw materials slip on the track and cause jamming/obstruction to the movement of personnel and equipment and field machinery.
