NEW DELHI, Dec 10: While most experts including the Disinvestment Commission say that a PSU should be revived and restructured before privatising it, the employees union of Bharat Leather Corporation (BLC) say that the Government is not giving it a chance to revive itself before privatisation.

The union has come out in support of a revival plan being undertaken by the management but is opposing the privatisation moves of the Government. It has written to Industry Minister Murasoli Maran about the `hostile' attitude of the Department of Heavy Industry (DHI) towards the corporation.

``The efforts of the present managing director, staff and workers to revive it (BLC) are being frustrated by the one of the directors on the board of BLC,'' says the letter written by N S Padmanabhan, general secretary of the BLC Workers Union, an affiliate of INTUC.

Speaking to the Indian Express Padmanabhan said, ``The new management is not being allowed to improve the sales of the company. Instead DHI is interfering with the functioning of the revival plan. The Department has called about eight board meetings since this year, while the norm is once in three months.''

For its part, DHI seems to have taken the view that no separate revival plan is necessary as the sale of equity to the private sector itself amounts to a revival package. On being contacted, an official of DHI said that BLC had accumulated losses of Rs 15 crore while its equity was only Rs 5 crore. On an annual sale of Rs 7.5 crore, the company made a loss of Rs 2.5 crore. Since BLC is not a manufacturing company but a trading company, it has not been referred to the Board of Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR).``To say that DHI is not allowing BLC's revival is incorrect. From our point of view, the privatisation of BLC itself is a revival plan as approved by the Cabinet. DHI has not yet decided whether to go in for an outright sale or for a joint venture,'' the official said.

BLC is among the PSUs under DHI for which the Cabinet has given the go-ahead for either an outright sale or a strategic sale to a private company with majority equity participation.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.