CITU DEMANDS SERIOUS PROBE ON THE ACCIDENT INCLUDING ON PREVENTIVE SAFETY AND OBSERVANCE OF STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE BY AN IMPARTIAL AGENCY AND FIX THE ACCOUNTABILITY
CITU DEMANDS LEGITIMATE COMPENSATION TO AFFECTED WORKERS AND THEIR FAMILY AND PERMANENT EMPLOYMENT FROM VICTIM’S FAMILY
The Centre of Indian Trade Unions is extremely shocked and grieved over the horrible fatal accident that took place in Visakhapatnam Steel Plant on 8th June 2026 while moving hot molten liquid steel from furnace (SMS) to continuous casting system. 8 employees on duty comprising 3 regular workers, 4 contract workers and one officer were killed on the spot and six more were severely injured besides a few others. Death toll may further increase.
A hurriedly issued Official Press Information Bureau Release after about three hours termed the accident as “Fire Accident”, which is not wholly factual and smacks of evasion of responsibility and accountability. Such horrible accident took place basically owing to gross violation of and compromise in the “STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE(SOP)” which is integrally linked with the basic preventive safety norms in such a extremely hazard-prone steel production process. While moving hot liquid molten steel from SMS-1 in the ladle through Crane to its destination of continuous caster, said molten steel has to be mixed with elements like ferro-alloy, manganese, silicon etc and compulsorily allow the MIX to be homogenized and degasified through Ladle Furnace (LF) and RH before the same is put in continuous caster. Any fault, evasion of this homogenization and degasification of the hot steel mix provokes the possibility of explosion of hot metal-mix on the Ladle and accident takes place through huge spillage of the hot metal from the Ladle causing such horribly tragic fatal accident as has happened in Vizag Steel Plant. And possibility of such default and violation of SOP cannot be wished away as the Vizag Steel Plant with such a huge capacity is operating with only one Ladel Furnace (LF), where as all other integrated steel plants under SAIL are having not less than three LF. Despite repeated and consistent persuasion by all the unions in the Plant to increase the number of Ladel Furnace, the management has been arrogantly ignoring such crucial necessity and made themselves busy in cutting down manpower and pushing for outsourcing to private. It is also reported that the quality of the ferro-alloy mixed with hot metal was below the standard quality and the standard time to be made available for Ladle Furnace process or Argon Rinsing Station (ARS) has been skipped on that fateful day of accident.
Situation has become much more critical in the production operation owing to thoughtless drive of cutting down operational manpower by the management, may be under the direction of concerned Ministry. In the face of depletion of regular trained workforce due to superannuation, any fresh recruitment has been not only stopped, the management has been pursuing virtually forced VRS further creating shortage. Not only that, more than 5000 skilled contract workers have been illegally terminated and a crisis of trained and skilled manpower availability has become a big hazard in ensuring safe and productive operation.
It is thus clear that the grievous accident killing eight employees and seriously injuring many could have been avoidable, had the standard operating procedure and ensuring proper quality of the mixing material and also operational discipline been religiously followed. Professional failure of the managerial authority in ensuing proper equipments, proper quality of basic raw materials and stringent pursuit of the standard operating procedure has caused such a grim tragedy and so many loss of lives. CITU demands a thorough probe on the accident by an impartial agency taking all above aspects with required focus to find the truth and stringently fixing accountability.
CITU also demands legitimate compensation for all the workers and their families affected by this tragic accident and also permanent employment to the family members of those died due to the accident at the earliest.
Issued by
Elamaram Kareem
General Secretary
