Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) has chalked out plans to reduce its manpower by 36,000 employees through a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) in the next three years at a cost of nearly Rs 2,000 crore.
In addition, nearly 12,000 employees would retire during the period, bringing down the total workforce of the company to one lakh.
The new VRS plan would be taken up for discussion by the group of ministers (GoM) on SAIL financial restructuring that is meeting here on Thursday after a gap of nearly one year.
The GoM would also discuss the requirement of resources and modalities of funding the VRS exercise.
SAIL has proposed to finance the VRS through a combination of internal resource generation, deferred payment scheme and fresh loans.
The GoM is expected to take a final decision on the quantum of funds to be raised from each of the three sources.
The company had already raised Rs 1,500 crore to fund its ongoing VRS programme, but had been slow in offering the scheme.
Against a target of shedding 10,000 employees in 2001-02, the company separated 6,510 employees and the figure for the current financial year stood at about 3,850 till October, according to the agenda note for the GoM meeting.
SAIL has also decided against rolling back the retirement age of its employees from 60 to 58 years as it realised that the financial outgo on the company would be higher.
The company has about 8,000 employees in the 58-60 age group and offering VRS to them would entail an investment of Rs 300 crore.
On the other hand, the payout on account of salaries till they reach 60 years of age works out to Rs 160 crore, the agenda note says.
Moreover, any move to reduce the retirement age would be met with a lot of resistance from the labour unions, it adds.
