KARACHI: The new administration of the Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) has hired five high salaried officers on contract basis amid the entity’s severe financial crunch.
The administration has hired Noor A Memon as the administration director, Khursheed Abbas as the security general manager, Brig (Retd) Rao Wahab as the director in administration, Razzaq Baloch as the deputy general manager in administration and also hired a person as the financial adviser.
Plagued by corruption, the PSM faced losses worth Rs 13 billion and Rs 26 billion during the fiscal years 2009-2010 and 2008-09 respectively.
“Hiring has been done in best interest of the PSM and to ease the crisis that it faces,” administration director, Noor A Memon told Pakistan Today.
“The high-salaried officers will not financially burden the PSM and in fact, work for its betterment.”
The administration has regularised around 55 workers from units like galvanising, temper mills and others that had been closed down from the past one-and-a-half years. Even those employees, who were on contract at the closed units, have had contract renewals after every three months.
In May this year, Minister of Federal Industries and Production, Mir Hazar Khan Bajarani had issued letters of permanent employee status to 5,000 daily wagers besides contract workers.
“Currently, the PSM is running at a 20 percent production capacity, but the subsidies being utilised by the new administration are for a 100 percent production capacity. This would surely result in further disaster for the mills,” said the sources.
However, Memon said the regularisation of employees was the government’s policy that had to be followed by the PSM.
“If units are closed for technical reasons, their workers would be accommodated in other departments” he said.
