Mehnati said it was still possible to pull the PSM out of crisis and transform it into a profitable public entity, if the due reforms were adopted. PHOTO: FILE
KARACHI: The Jamaat-e-Islami Karachi Amir Muhammad Hussain Mehnati has urged the ruling regime to take immediate note of the problems plaguing Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM), demanding a bailout package for the struggling institution.
Talking to a labour union delegation at Idara Noor-e-Haq on Saturday, Mehnati praised the efforts of newly elected officials to safeguard institutions like the Pakistan Railways and to cop the power crisis hurting the country. He asked the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar to react with similar measures for the PSM.
Mehnati expressed deep concerns over the non-payment of staff salaries in the PSM. He said he thought it was still possible to pull the PSM out of crisis and transform it into a profitable public entity, if the due reforms were adopted.
It is worth noting that if approved, this would be the third such bailout in as many years. The PSM has already been granted Rs75 billion in bailouts over the past three years.
The Pakistan Steel Labour Organisation Union General Secretary Zafar Khan apprised JI leadership of the issues facing Pakistan Steel Mills. He said that former ruling regimes had tainted this great organisation with corruption and nepotism. Efforts to pave the way for privatisation had further ruined it.
Khan elaborated that as late as 2008 – when the ex-ruling regime assumed the office – the PSM was a profitable organisation . But over the next five years, salary payments had become a headache for the same organisation.
Khan cited the information as evidence of the corruption inherent in the former government. He also criticised the role of the Collective Bargaining Agent (CBA) in worsening the situations of the institution. He urged the JI leadership to step forward and make due efforts to realise the payment of salaries and reforms in the PSM.
The JI Karachi Amir assured the labour representatives of the same cooperation and support as the union enjoyed from JI in the past. He demanded the government to quit plans of privatising PSM and instead, appoint honest and responsible management for its revitalisation. He demanded immediate reforms and restructuring of the management, as well as the appointment of a new Chief Executive Officer.
Selling out your strategic and important assets and organizations is worst step to be taken. I second JI in this regard.
If privatization is solution of every misery and problem, would you privatize Government as well ultimately? Why not, our governments have been under performing ever since electoral democratic process is prevailing in country.
We just need good, honest and capable leadership ... and all of our major organizations can be turn into profitable ones.
@Saleem Khan: Who Said anything about selling it cheap? did i? I don't think so. Just take the example of MCB Bank, PTCL, HBL Bank. These companies used to SUCK BLOOD. Now look at their performance (Improving our Life Standards & creating thousands of jobs). If our Governments had the will to run these Organizations efficiently they would have had done it already. (Who Stopped them?)
@Saleem Khan: Now you should sell it for walnut to Sharifs, they had already worked hard to swallow it without any nut. They gulped the whole Gadani Ship Breaking industry without any butt. Keep it for providing jobs to people not on merit basis, but on political basis or sold on prescribed rates and creating a "Dharna Politics Centre" for blackmailing the administration and extraction of funds and payment of sallaries without any any out put. That's what is exactly going on presently in PSM. Keep doing it till there would be nothing left on ground to be privatized, like Zeal Pak Cement Factory and then some one will bribe people to scratch it off.
Panacea of all economic issues, bad governance, nepotism, corruption and ailing industries is privatization. Most political parties have wrought PIA, PSM, Railways and all other state owned institutions with their incompetent ardent supporters who have most incompetent students and sedentary.
There should be absolutely no privatization under PMLN government. We already know what they did with MCB. This time too vultures have already started hovering over the prime assets.
@Bhatti: yeah, sell it off for peanuts (Like Musharraf tried to sell it to Mr. Arif Habib in 2002 for the price of SCRAP that was in steel mills). Destroy the economy!
Maybe someone can try and reduce corruption? That will turn our Steel Mills (and many more public corporations like PIA, OGRA etc) into economic giants! Privatization is not the only solution!
Those bright sparks who parrot western politicians and call for privatisation should look at the results of the world's greatest exponent of privatisation, Margaret Thatcher. She was prime minister of the UK for just over a decade, to the end of 1990. Remember, the purpose of privatisation is to reduce government debt by selling off national assets.
Here is the graph of UK Public Net Debt from 1900 to 2011: http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchartukgs.php?chart=G0-total&year=19002011&units=b&state=UK
It can be clearly seen that far from reducing government debt, the privatisation program, which was vigorously pursued by Thatcher and her successors in office, has VASTLY INCREASED government debt. The same story applies to that other bastion of laissez-faire free-wheeling capitalism, the USA.
While freedom of speech is as important a human right as say, freedom of thought, it would save time and effort if well-meaning individuals who advocate privatisation, look at actual track records before speaking. The late Baroness Thatcher eviscerated British industry. The birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, which gave the world steel-making, efficient coal production, energy generation and myriad other industrial processes, was butchered by British politicians, goaded on by greedy capitalists who bought these priceless state assets for a fraction of their true market worth.
To sum up, please, please, please NEVER EVER privatise. Look at the actual track results, and you will agree that what I claim, is true. Say NO to privatisation !
Keep in mind that the amount of money doled out just to keep PSM afloat could have been used to make three new 1 million ton PSM's. And some people still want to support more financial lollypops just to please the Karachi political masters
What was wrong when Musharraf had ordered its privatization. This PCO CJ had taken Sua Mota and held in abayance privatization order.Had they done that by now steel mill would have been different.
Finally a sane voice. Pakistan Steel mill, is an extremely profitable department, all it requires is the intention and will of govt.
JI should stick to dharnas and rallies. That is the only thing they are good at.
wht is JI to do with pakistan steel?
Political expediency at the expense of the economy and the Nation is simply stupid.