Year 2021: When Centre dissolved the Ordinance Factory Board

New Delhi, Dec 11: This year the Defence Ministry took a major decision and
and dissolved the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) with effect from October 1 and transferred its assets, employees and management to seven public sector units (PSUs), according to an official order.

As part of the "Atmanirbhar Bharat" (self-reliant India) package, the central government had announced on May 16 last year that it would improve autonomy, accountability and efficiency in ordnance supplies by corporatisation of the OFB.

In an order dated September 28, the defence ministry said: Government of India has decided to transfer, with effect from October 1, 2021, the management, control, operations and maintenance of these 41 production units and identified non-production units to seven government companies (wholly owned by the government of India).

According to the order, the name of the seven defence PSUs (also called DPSUs) are Munition India Limited, Armoured Vehicles Nigam Limited, Advanced Weapons and Equipment India Limited, Troop Comforts Limited, Yantra India Limited, India Optel Limited and Gliders India Limited.

The OFB is currently a defence ministry entity and supplies critical arms and ammunition to the three armed forces and the paramilitary.

The order said: The government has decided that all the employees of OFB (Group A, B & C) belonging to the production units and also the identified non-production units shall be transferred en masse to the new DPSUs on terms of foreign service without any deputation allowance (deemed deputation) initially for a period of two years from the appointed date (October 1).

Each of the new DPSUs is required to frame rules and regulations related to service conditions of the absorbed employees, the order noted.

Each of the DPSUs should also seek an option for permanent absorption from the employees on deemed deputation to that respective DPSU, within a period of two years, it stated.

The service conditions of the absorbed employees would not be inferior to the existing ones. A committee would be constituted by DDP (Department of Defence Production) for guiding the new DPSUs in this regard so that the absorption package given is attractive, the order mentioned.

The Ministry also clarified that there to privatise the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB).

"Rumours being spread that OFB is being privatised are misguiding and with the intent to mislead workers," the ministry said in a statement.

It was explained to the employee organisations that there is no proposal to privatise OFB. The proposal under consideration of government is to make it into Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs), which is 100 per cent government-owned," the statement said.

The committee also pointed out that the employees' call for "30-day strike was unprecedented, especially when the government has already agreed to their demand to hold discussions at the ministry level and is in process of continuously engaging with them", the statement said.