The Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) has blamed the dumping of imported steel products, stoppage of gas supply and non-release of committed funds that led to the present state of affairs in the top industry of the country.
Spokesman of the PSM on Tuesday said that the PSM during April-June 2015 had an inventory of about Rs 9 billion but was caught in a crunch situation due to working capital deficit. The working capital deficit happened due to delay of 3-4 months in the release of funds as per ECC decision.
The spokesman said that it was unfair to blame the PSM for current state of affairs and not to say a single word as to its achieving 50 percent capacity utilisation on 7th January 2015 when gas was stopped next day and again when plant was revived and 65 percent capacity achieved on 12th March 2015 then again the gas was disrupted the next day. These unannounced stoppages broke rhythm of plant and affected four months output.
The spokesman said that the workforce of PSM was competent, highly qualified, skillful (trained abroad), motivated and efficient, which is evident by performance of PSM till 2008. The skill and motivation was demonstrated in the last 1½ year when a frozen/chilled blast furnace was brought into operation which no other country could do without a capital repair costing billion of rupees.
He said apart from revival of blast furnace, the PSM workforce, at their own, repaired waste heat boilers of steel making department, 6.3 MW motor and took up repairs of boilers and turbines of thermal power plant (TPP). The spokesman further added that PSM had a huge manufacturing setup as a support to carry out repairs and maintenance of its main production units. “It is a fact that local industry is not yet fully developed to meet all the repair and maintenance requirement of an integrated steel plant like PSM. About 3,000 employees are engaged with these repair and maintenance activities.
Furthermore, he said, the PSM was situated about 35 KM of Karachi, it was plant’s operational requirement to settle a portion of workforce near the plant, therefore the PSM had to develop its own colony – Steel Township – with more than 4,000 residential units and many other buildings. “The huge area of PSM which includes land for its expansion and that downstream industries by private sector need maintenance and up keep. Therefore, the PSM is not like any other factory. It is an industrial complex/city and hub of future industrial growth.”
“The payment of gas bill for the current year was almost double as compared to the payment made in the last year, but at that time gas was never stopped. It is also to be noted that gas bills started piling up since 2008-09, but gas supply was never stopped/disrupted at that time. He pointed out that the gas supply to K-Electric with liabilities of about Rs 63 billion is never stopped,” he added.
