This is the situation when the company has work orders worth about Rs 1500 crore from various companies including ISRO, mining sector and SAIL, but does not have the working capital to complete it. The officers and employees here have 19 to 20 months’ salary outstanding.
ख़त्म होने के कगार पर मदर ऑफ ऑल इंडस्ट्रीज HEC, ठंडी पड़ गईं तीनों विशाल भट्ठियां
The public sector company HEC (Heavy Engineering Corporation), which was known as the Mother of All Industries in the country, is now moving towards “death”. All three huge furnaces of its Foundry Forge Plant (FFP) have cooled down. It will cost Rs 4 to 5 crore to restart them and the company is currently not in a position to spend even that amount.
This is the situation when the company has work orders worth about Rs 1500 crore from various companies including ISRO, mining sector and SAIL, but does not have the working capital to complete it. The officers here have 19 to 20 months’ salary outstanding. The extent is such that the Union Ministry of Heavy Industries has given up on providing any kind of help to the company.
The foundation stone of the company was laid in 1958 and production started in 1963. After this, till the Covid period in the year 2020, there had never been such a situation when all the furnaces in the company had to be closed. This is the second time after the Covid period, when all the furnaces of the Foundry Forge Plant have gone cold.
Experts say that HEC’s Foundry Forge Plant (FFP) is the largest forging and foundry plant of its kind in the world. This plant is spread over 13 lakh 16 thousand 930 square meters, in which 76,000 tonnes of machinery is installed. Producer gas is produced from the gas plant located at the Foundry Forge Plant (FFP). This company, which started with about 22 thousand employees, now has only 3400 employees and officers and they too have no work left except registering their attendance in the plants daily.
Workers usually protest in front of the plant every week demanding payment of their outstanding salaries, but there is no one here to listen to them. The company has not had a full-time CMD for more than two years. Dr. Nalin Singhal, Chairman and Managing Director of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) is the CMD in-charge here, who comes here occasionally in two-three months.
Recently, in response to a question in the Parliament, the Central Government had told that HEC has been in loss for five consecutive years. According to the government’s reply, HEC will receive Rs 93.67 crore in the year 2018-19, Rs 405.37 crore in the year 2019-20, Rs 175.78 crore in the year 2020-21, Rs 256.07 crore in the year 2021-22 and Rs 283.58 crore in the year 2022-23. There has been a loss of Rs.
7,199.51 acres of land from 23 villages in Ranchi was acquired in 1958 for the establishment of Heavy Engineering Corporation (HEC). Thousands of farmers and tribal families living in these villages were evicted. HEC was established as the Mother of All Industry (Matri Udyog). It has produced countless numbers of heavy machinery and equipment for various industries including Steel, Cement, Aluminium, Mining, Mineral Processing, Defence, ISRO, Railways, Coal Sector in the last 60 years of history.
With time, due to non-renewal of factory machines, inefficiencies of management, conflicts between unions and management, HEC started incurring losses and its financial condition deteriorated year after year. Although there were several discussions at the central level regarding its revival, no concrete steps could be taken till now.
In the year 2016, the Central Government formed a multi-member committee of experts under the chairmanship of Dr. Vijay Kumar Saraswat, member of NITI Aayog and former Secretary of DRDO, to analyze the prospects of HEC based on the “Modernization and Revival Plan”. The Saraswat Committee strongly recommended the revival of HEC. It was also recommended to modernize its plants, introduce a system of bank guarantees to ensure the working capital of the company, and immediately appoint a managing director and directors.
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