: While the current management of BrahMos Aerospace Thiruvananthapuram Ltd. (BATL) says the firm’s financial crisis is owing to the “injudicious” revision of pay in 2013 as also the firm’s meagre productivity, the BrahMos Employees Union, affiliated to the AITUC, has pointed fingers at the previous management of the parent company, Indo-Russian BrahMos Aerospace Pvt Ltd .(BAPL), for plunging it into the crisis.
“It was in the offing, but the management kept it a closely-guarded secret till recently,” said A. Ullas Kumar, general secretary of the union. He said the management refused to take the employees into confidence and conducted needless recruitments, which resulted in heavily skewed worker-officer ratio.
A chunk of the capital pumped in by the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) at the time of BrahMos Aerospace’s takeover of Kerala public sector utility Keltec was ploughed back to the DRDO for no reason, he said. He claimed that both BAPL and the DRDO remained apathetic to the needs of BATL, which was asked to fend for itself. “BrahMos Aerospace, an Indo-Russian JV that owned the BATL, would not fund the subsidiary as Russia was not a party to the takeover,” he says.
While the government and the management tried to choke trade union activity, it was legitimised by the court, which also posed questions on the way the public sector Keltec was converted into a private firm without moorings.
As on date, the BATL has 332 employees on its rolls besides 170 workers on contract.
A senior official, however, said the pay revision of January 2013 placed an additional burden of Rs 5 crore annually on the firm, without which it would have registered a profit, however paltry.
Besides, the delayed setting up of the missile integration complex (MIC) in end-2012 impacted the company’s revenue.
“Last year, we generated Rs 2.4 crore from the MIC, which became operational in early 2013. It will do even better this year. We also had our share of troubles acquiring land for setting up facilities. Besides the original 15 acres that we got from Keltec, acquiring an adjoining plot of seven acres from the Air Force took a long time. The MIC was set up on 3.5 acres that forms part of the Air Force land, which has not been completely vacated by them. The State government acquired and handed over 20 acres of land at Muttathara to the Air Force in lieu of the land they gave us. The Ministry of Defence paid Rs.40 crore for constructing dwelling units on the alternative piece of land given to the Air Force,” said a senior official.
