Vizag Steel Plant employees face money crisis due to demonetisation

While the whole nation is dealing with demonetisation, the employees of Vizag Steel Plant face problems too. Reportedly, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), the corporate entity of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant which employees the maximum masses in the city, is not able to pay salary to its employees.

Even though the salary of thirty thousand people including employees, contractors and officials were deposited earlier, many of them couldn’t use this money for their good. Only 30% of the people from the Vizag Steel Plant have access to debit and credit cards and hence the others are hit by cash crisis. An estimated amount of 12.5 crore is required to pay Rs 10,000 each to the employees of the Steel Plant but the banks are not able to provide this money due to the lack of adequate amount of cash. The salary of all the 18,500 regular employees was credited on 30th November but it tends to be of less use. The Vizag Steel City has seven banks with State Bank of India being the main one but all together the banks were unable to provide such huge amount to the Steel City.

The RINL management decided to pay an amount of 10,000 each to all its employees in cash which were to be deducted from the salary of January 2017 but after the demonetisation process, this money dispersion remains on the paper. This offer was initially made by the Ministry of Finance which may take place now on Friday [i.e today].

The average salary of the employee of the Vizag Steel Plant is 50,000 INR after all the deductions which cannot be accessed by them due to the rules announced by the government after the currency change. While most of them are using debit/credit cards for their transactions, the others with no cards are undergoing money crisis.