INTUC opposes Nalco divestment

Bhubaneswar, June 22 (UNI) The Orissa unit of the Indian National Trade Union Congress(INTUC) today opposed the centre's decision to divest ten per cent of its equity in the National Aluminium Company Limited(NALCO).

In a strong resolution, adopted here to lodge its protest against the divestment, the INTUC urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram to reconsider the decision and withdraw the divestment in NALCO.

INTUC Orissa unit president R C Khuntia told newspersons that there was no reason for the Centre to go ahead with the divestment in a profit-making PSU like NALCO, which had earned Rs 1237 crore profit this year.

If at all the government wanted divestment to carry forward the expansion programme of the NALCO, it could have been done with the profit of four years to execute the expansion programme, Mr Khuntia remarked.

He said the INTUC would send its resolution to the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister, the Mines Minister and the Labour Minister, urging them to desist the idea of divestment in the greater interest of the country as well as the people of Orissa.

Mr Khuntia, also AICC General Secretary and a former Rajya Sabha member, said he would personally meet the Prime Minister and Congress president Sonia Gandhi and urge them not to go ahead with the divestment proposal for NALCO.

The INTUC leader alleged that Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik during his tenure as Union Mines Minister had approved the proposal for ten per Cent divestment in NALCO. The NDA government, he said, even created a divestment department to carry out disinvestment of PSUs but a strong protest in Orissa forced them to drop the idea later.

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