KARACHI: About 3,000 retired employees of the Pakistan Steel Mills have been running from pillar to post to get their retirement dues, benefits totalling Rs5 billion for the past several years but have not yet succeeded because the mills, lying idle, does not have funds, Dawn has learnt.

Sources said some 188 retired employees had passed away without getting their dues.

A few months ago, an opposition leader had visited the largest civilian industrial complex located just outside the metropolis and had said that he would raise the issue, they said. They added that the federal government had also made a ‘onetime payment’ to the steel mills so that the dues of the dead employees could be cleared and paid to their heirs.

Many of the retired employees, who requested that their names not be mentioned in the newspaper because they feared revenge from the steel mills management and that the management might further delay their payment of their dues, said that they had served the national industrial complex all their lives and now when they had retired and were hoping to spend their retirement comfortably, they had become hand to mouth because of non-payment of their dues.

They said that they were now unable to even get medicines, etc, pay their children’s school fee, or married them off.

The sources in the steel mills not only confirmed these claims of the retired employees, but giving a background of the deteriorating situation in the steel mills, said that the mills that had been operating in losses for the past few years faced a serious setback when the Sui Southern Gas company, owing to non-payment of its dues, curtailed its supply and lowered the gas pressure over a year ago forcing the steel mills to stop its production.

Owing to non-operation of the mills per day loss is said to be Rs70 million. The mill has been nonoperational since June 2015.

They said that the raw material — including, semi finished products like slabs and coal / coke etc — worth over Rs5 billion was present in the stores of the mills and if the normal gas supply was restored finished goods could be produced and sold to generate funds with which not only the steel mills could recover, but also the retired employees could be paid.

They said that low priority on which the government kept the steel mills could be gauged from the fact that there was no permanent chairman / chief executive officer at the biggest industrial complex in the country since April 2016 when its previous chief, also holding the charge additionally, retired.

Currently federal secretary of industries and production Khizar Hayat Gondal is holding the charge of the mills.

The sources said that there still were over 13,000 employees on the payroll of the mills whose monthly net salary bill was around Rs380 million and who, looking at the way the retired employees were being treated, were unsure of their future and unrest was spreading among them.

They said that every month roughly between 100 and 150 employees were retiring and probably the government was waiting that when all the 13,000 employees retired then the mills would be privatised so that the private owner did not have any baggage and could start afresh, leaving the retired workers to wait for their dues and die in the process of time.

Published in Dawn October 19th, 2016