December 3, 2021
Nusrat Jahan makes Zero Hour mention on selling of profitable public sector enterprises
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Sir,
As we all know, the public sector was structured to spearhead a chain of revolutions, leading to a path of economic growth. In the initial years of (economic) planning, the public sector was used as a strong tool by the government to maintain its control over the key industries. The public sector was, in fact, seen as an instrument to move towards the ideal of a so-called ‘socialist state’. The wages given in the public sector industries was supposed to be a model for the private sector enterprises. But now the government is considering the possibility of raising revenue by disinvesting its shareholding in major ‘maharatna’ and ‘navratna’ public sector units like Coal India, IOC, HPCL, SAIL, GAIL, BHEL, Air India, etc. very aggressively. So, my question is, why going for selling profit-making industries? Rather, if you want to disinvest, disinvest from the loss-making industries. Due to such an aggressive disinvestment policy, the employees are suffering from total uncertainty. The whole country is very proud of our major government-run industries. Thus, Sir, I humbly request the Government to at least sell the loss-making PSUs through a PPP model and not through a total sellout.
And at the end, Sir, my party and I strongly oppose the disinvestment of profit-making PSUs by the government, and I appeal to the Honourable Prime Minister to come to the House and tell us about the actual design and proposals of the government with respect to the future of PSUs in our country. Dhanyavad.
