ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of Industries and Production has sought the approval of the Cabinet Committee on State-Owned Enterprises for reconstituting the Board of Directors (BoD) of Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM).
In a summary forwarded to the Cabinet Committee on State-Owned Enterprises for reconstituting the board of PSM has recommended the committee to select fives member of independent directors out of 14 names consisting of five panels.
Panel one will be selected by the Prime Minister’s Office, while in panel two, the ministry has recommended Bushra Naz Malik as principal candidate while Qaysaar Alam Khan and Farah Agha as alternate candidates.
The panel three recommends Saifullah Chatta as principal candidate while Wasif Waseem Ashraf and Imran Bashir as alternate candidates.
Panel four suggests Azizul Haque Nishtar as principal candidate while Shahab Rizvi and Aamir Hassan Lari are alternate candidates and panel five recommended Sindh government’s nominated member as principal candidate while Khuram Gulzar and Syed Athar Hussain as alternate candidates.
According to the summary, PSM Corporation (Private) Ltd is a public sector company registered under the Companies Act, 1913. It works under the administrative control of the Industries and Production Division with the objective to support the steel-related sectors.
According to Article 90 of the Article of Association of PSM, the number of directors shall not be less than five and not more than twelve including the Chairman and the Chief Executive (Annex-I).
Presently, eight out of nine members are working on the Board of Pakistan Steel Mills (Annex-II).
Under Section 10 of the State-Owned Enterprises (Governance and Operations) Act, 2023, a Board Nomination Committee (BNC) is empowered to identify and recommend candidates to the federal government for appointment as independent directors and also recommend ex-officio positions on the respective Boards of Public Sector Entities (Annex-III).
Moreover, the ECC of the Cabinet in its decision dated 20th December 2023 also directed the Ministry of Industries and Production to initiate the process to dissolve the current Board of Directors of PSM (Annex-IV).
The Board nomination committee in terms of Section 10 of the State-Owned Enterprises (Governance and Operations) Act, 2023 has recommended the following panel of candidates to the Federal Cabinet for appointment as Directors on the BoD-PSM.
The summary said that the federal minister for industries and production has seen and authorised submission of this summary to the Cabinet Committee on State-Owned Enterprises.
According to sources, the PSM accumulated financial 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 MOI&P irresponsible attitude/negligence, took no notice on the complaints addressed against PSM BOD/Ad-hoc management. The PSM present BOD is non-professional and management structure is non-existent without CEO from June 2023.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024