India has a coastline of 7,517 km with 13 major ports and 187 minor and non-major ports sprinkled along the coast. Moreover, there are a number of naval establishments along the coast, which support strategic assets. In such a scenario, it would be wrong on part of the government to disinvest a profit-making PSU like Dredging Corporation of India and hand it over to a private sector, said former IAS officer and Energy Secretary E.A.S. Sarma.
He was speaking at a round table organised by Forum for Development of North Andhra and People for India, here on Tuesday.
According to him, dredging is part of coastal activity that facilitates the movement of both commercial and naval ships and it opening up such a strategic sector to the private segment will have national security implications.
“Today, government is open to FDI in private sector and what is the guarantee that an enemy country will not invest in it,” he said.
DCI is a profit making company and there is no necessity for strategic disinvestment of 51 %, he added. According to Mr. Sarma, the strategic PSU should be strengthened, as it is the only public sector dredging company in India and is also a globe player in the field of dredging.
Mr. Aja Sarma of FDNA said it was the government that was responsible for weakening the company. “The government owes a lot of money to DCI. If the money is paid back, the company will do much better,” he said. Speakers at the round table conference members said the Union government made DCI to spend ₹ 450 crore in the aborted ‘Sethu Samudram’ project and it has not reimbursed the amount so far.
For the past three years and the government is conspiring to starve DCI of its work orders by seeing that the orders are bagged by private dredging companies, said Mr. Aja Sarma. N. Venkatesh, employee of DCI recently ended his life in desperation, as he was apprehensive about his future in the event of privatisation.
The round table urged the government to shelve the proposal immediately. Former bureaucrat C.S. Rao, BL Narayana of PFI and others were present.
