Drop protest, get incentives, says NLC

CHENNAI: As the 38-day-old strike by contract workers continued at the Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC), the company made it clear that the incentives can be given to the protestors only if they withdrew the stir.“Withdraw you stir and we will give you incentives,” A R Ansari, chairman and managing director of NLC told reporters here on Monday.“At present we have 4,200 vacancies in Industrial Cooperative Service Society (Incoserve) at NLC and we are ready to fill those vacancies in sequel to the awaited apex court directive in this regard,” he said. Noting that the issue was not between the NLC management and the contract workers, Ansari said the deadlock was due to the dispute in seniority between Incoserve and the contract workers. “We can induct new workforce, but we will not do it since we respect the sentiments of the contract workers,” Ansari said.“My contract workers are innocent and we are ready to give them incentives if they are ready to withdraw their strike,” he said. “We need them for the smooth functioning of the Corporation,” he added.Though Ansari observed that the stir did not affect the production, he admitted the fact that the stir will have an effect in due course. He noted that the pay of NLC contract workers was the highest ever among the unskilled labour in the country.He took exception to the charge of recruiting untrained and adolescent boys to fill the gap in work force due to the stir. “We take new people who will be trained in our Vocational Training Centre and they will be inducted into the workforce only after they obtain the certificate of training,” he said.