ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of Industries and Production after the passage of 11 months has assigned the look after charge of chief executive officer of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) to Mohammad Asad Islam Mahni till the appointment of a regular head of the steel mill.
The PSM was operating without a boss since June 2023. According to a notification, the ministry has assigned Mohammad Asad Islam Mahni to look after the charge of CEO PSM till the ministry appoints a permanent CEO of the corporation.
The caretaker CEO of the PSM after assuming the charge has issued fresh guidelines regarding the irregular continuation of services of officers beyond the age of superannuation.
As per an official communiqué, the PSM chief has issued the following policy guidelines regarding re-hiring the services of retired employees and to fill their void by stop-gap arrangement in order to create redundancy, avoid future audit observations, reduction in financial burden of PSM and to avoid infringement of rights of the officers in promotion zone.
The official letter said that no employee will henceforth be hired after retirement. The senior most officers of the department concerned will be immediately engaged to look after the charge of the vacant position.
The services contract of Shafiq Anjum has already expired on April 2024 and attained the age of 63 years. Therefore, the senior most officer of the corporate secretariat of the PSM may be given the charge of Corporate Secretary.
In case of the non-availability of a suitable officer, law in-charge of PSM being a regular officer may be assigned additional duties of the position.
The service contract of Ghulam Rasool, liaison officer has expired on May 5, 2024, and is not extended, therefore, engineer Mohammad Shoaib, Xen being the most senior regular officer is posted at the zonal office Islamabad may be allowed to run the day-to-day affairs of the position.
The Ministry of Industries and Production has recently constituted an eight-member committee to revive the Pakistan Steel Mills. The committee headed by the federal secretary of Industries and Production include the additional secretary of Industries and Production, senior member of the Board of Revenue Sindh, joint secretary of Finance, CEO of PIDC, and representatives of the Worker Union of Steel Mills and two independent board members of the steel mills, including the Director Technical and Corporate Secretary.
The committee will review the plan to shut down the steel mills and auction off its plants and machinery. The committee will also explore options to revive Pakistan steel mills with the cooperation of the private sector.
The then-caretaker government removed Pakistan Steel Mills from its privatisation list of state-owned entities. The government issued a new list of state-owned entities (SOEs) that was handed over to the private sector under its privatisation programme. Overall, 26 SOEs will be privatised under the ongoing government programme including four institutions each in the financial and real estate sectors.
However, the PSM stakeholders have rejected the government’s decision of reviving the state-run entity saying that the current Board of Directors of the PSM was not professional and lacking the capacity to complete the task.
The PSM’s accumulated losses were more than Rs224billion, payable debts liabilities were more than Rs344 billion, SSGC bills Rs98 billion till February 2024, approximately, Rs100 million per day financial bleeding continues from July 2023 to March 2024 due to the MOI&P’s irresponsible attitude/negligence, took no notice on the complaints addressed against PSM BOD/Ad-hoc management.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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