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Pakistani Mill Seeks Bailout To Avoid Shutdown
08/07/2015 - Pakistan Steel Mills has asked the Pakistani government for Rs5 billion in aid, plus the postponement of gas bills to avoid a shutdown, the DAWN newspaper reported.
The mill has been on heat mode for the last 56 days, but has produced nothing, the newspaper said.
“Mismanagement and corruption has led the country’s largest industrial complex to a virtual shutdown. It’s already on its last leg of life, breathing on ventilator,” a senior official of the Ministry of Industries and Production told Dawn. “This is unprecedented in the history of any metallurgical plant in the world to have run on heat-mode for so long,” he added.
“It is unable to pay its debts, liabilities, salaries to its manpower, utilities bills and financial commitments. It has not paid its gas bills to (Sui Southern Gas Co.), resulting reduction in gas pressure since June 10, 2015,” the official told the newspaper.
The official told the newspaper that a lobbying effort to win a bailout from the ministries of finance, privatization and production has been underway for the past three weeks, but so far has been in vain.
The newspaper, citing unnamed sources, said the plant's management is now encouraging the worker unions to hit the streets to call public attention to the crisis and to push for a government resolution.
“Mismanagement and corruption has led the country’s largest industrial complex to a virtual shutdown. It’s already on its last leg of life, breathing on ventilator,” a senior official of the Ministry of Industries and Production told Dawn. “This is unprecedented in the history of any metallurgical plant in the world to have run on heat-mode for so long,” he added.
“It is unable to pay its debts, liabilities, salaries to its manpower, utilities bills and financial commitments. It has not paid its gas bills to (Sui Southern Gas Co.), resulting reduction in gas pressure since June 10, 2015,” the official told the newspaper.
The official told the newspaper that a lobbying effort to win a bailout from the ministries of finance, privatization and production has been underway for the past three weeks, but so far has been in vain.
The newspaper, citing unnamed sources, said the plant's management is now encouraging the worker unions to hit the streets to call public attention to the crisis and to push for a government resolution.
