Visakhapatnam: The Visakha Ukku Parirakshana Porata committee served a notice to go on strike on or after March 25^th against the move to privatize the Steel Plant. The representatives of the Visakha Ukku Parirakshana Committee served the notice to RINL chairman and MD, the corporate entity of Visakhapatnam steel plant on Thursday afternoon.

The Committee representatives Mantri Raja sekhar, D Adinarayana and Ch Narasinga Rao. In the strike notice, the committee demanded repeal of the approval accorded by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) for 100 percent strategic sale of RINL, scrapping of the inter-secretaries group constituted to study the strategic sale and scrapping of the MoU signed with South Korean steel giant POSCO in 2019 for construction of an integrated steel plant.

The other demands in the notice include suspension of the recent MoU with National Buildings Construction Company on redevelopment and monetization of land parcels at Maddilapalem and providing permanent employment to all the left out rehabilitation card holders. The employees have been staging protests for the past couple of days at Kurmannapalem, blocking traffic on the busy national highway protesting the move to privatise the steel plant.

The employees called off their protest on Wednesday in view of the elections to the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation but on Thursday, they once again resumed their protests by staging relay hunger strikes. The committee is also planning to further intensify the agitation by giving a Chalo Delhi call and to block the national highways in all the 13 districts of the state in the coming days.