India has been one of the largest steel producers, and globally ranked second with production at 106.5 MT in 2018. Steel and its associated mining and metallurgy sectors have seen major development and investment over the years and has been one of the key sectors generating employment and supporting economic growth.
Steel has a key role to play in a developing economy as it is a critical input to support growth across major sectors such as construction, infrastructure, automotive, capital goods, defense, rail etc. Being recyclable and by supporting faster completion time for infra projects, steel also emerges as key driver for environmentally sustainable economic development.
Workmen welfare, safety and skill development are being considered as key imperatives towards implementation of Ministry of Steel Vision for the Indian steel sector.
“Meet the anticipated demand of 160 million tons of steel for becoming a $5 trillion economy, through a competitive, efficient, environment friendly steel industry, adhering to global safety and quality standards.”
Vision – Ministry of Steel
A key element of the Vision is to create and facilitate employment (direct and indirect) for 12 million by 2024
Workforce welfare features as a priority area, where in there would be a focus to promote safety and workforce welfare for the Indian steel sector and facilitate development of skilled manpower.
Safe practices at workplace are expected to ensure a healthy working environment and guard against possible hazards and risks for workers and towards this Ministry of Steel had constituted a working group to develop the Model guidelines of safety practices for iron and steel sector.
Towards this objective, 25 safety guidelines have been finalized and uploaded on the Ministry of Steel website for adoption by the iron and steel sector. An additional 15 draft guideline (process based) has been worked out by a working group comprising the steel industry, associations, and academia (SAIL, Tata Steel, IIT Kharagpur, NISST etc.). These draft guidelines are available at MoS website for people to send inputs or comments by 31st December 2019.
Apart from these various outreach initiatives have been undertaken to better enable and support workforce of Steel CPSEs. These initiatives are focused on taking care of people issues. At SAIL, pension scheme is being implemented and process for Wage Revision, 2017 of Non-executives and 3rd PRC for executives will be implemented.