ORIND employees awaiting clearance of pending dues

Rourkela: Plight of thousands of workers at Shaswat International ORIND Ltd at Lathikata, the oldest refractory plant in Sundargarh district, has compounded as their various dues remain uncleared since 2000.

According to union leaders, ORIND is neck deep in debt to the tune of Rs. 60 crore including dues towards Provident Fund (PF) and gratuity of the employees. Debts of different banks and dues of various government departments were estimated at Rs. 100 crore approximately.

This was revealed in a meeting held recently in the ADM office, Rourkela where Sundargarh Collector, Roopa Roshan Sahoo; ADM Rourkela, R N Mishra; Additional SP, Sudarsan Sethi; Sub-Collector, Panposh, S B Mishra; Sub-Collector, Sundargarh, Bimalendu Ray; heads of UBI and Bank of India (BOI); Income Tax and Sales Tax Directors; Wesco officials and several union leaders were present.

The meeting was called for clearance of debts and dues by selling the property of the company. Legal advisor of ORIND said that its property and assets can be auctioned in the presence of all union leaders, head of district administration and ORIND management.

Set up in 1962 in collaboration with companies from America, Austria, and German, ORIND went in for production in 1966, successfully carrying out the business for over two decades with windfall profits. It is alleged that owners of refractory- Jugal Kishore Jhunjhunwala, Kashi Prasad Jhunjhunwala, Ravin Jhunjhunwala, Mohan Jhunjhunwala and Soren Jhunjhunwala- later diversified their business in other parts of the country and abroad, neglecting ORIND.

Though in 1988 Ravin Jhunjhunwala took over the refractory, later it was locked out without clearing the dues of the workers. Orind Employees’ Association and other workers’ association termed the lockout of the refractory as illegal.

AITUC leader Pravat Mishra alleged that the management did not clear the arrears and sought government’s intervention in the matter. AITUC, CITU and HMS have been demanding immediate disbursement of pending salaries, deposit of statutory dues and financial settlements of retired and dead employees.

In such dire straits, the company is not in a position to resume operation, said a representative of ORIND.

A high level meeting chaired by Chief Secretary Bijay Kumar Patnaik, was held at Bhubaneswar recently to sort out the issue. ORIND representative S K Bhadra was present. As ORIND MD Ravin Jhunjhunwala’s physical presence is required because of court and bank proceedings, the Chief Secretary had asked Rourkela SP to facilitate extradition of Ravin from Singapore with help of Interpol, said A P Ray, a union leader.

After the said meeting it is learned that day by day ORIND workers’ payment issue is going to be complex because of which some of the workers as well as their families are living in penury.