Bengaluru: More than one lakh workers employed with 41 ordinance factories across the country have started a month-long agitation demanding the government to drop its move to corporatise the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB).
However, the Ministry of Defence has clarified that there is no move to privatise OFB but the decision to corporatize OFB will not pose a threat to jobs of its workers. Further, the Ministry said the need to corporatise was recognized long time back when three committees - T.K.A. Nair committee (May 2000), Dr Vijay Kelkar committee (2004), Raman Puri Committee (April 2015) had recommended the improvement of OFB and to make it autonomous and transparent.
The Ministry said the poor quality of OFB products were a constant concern of the armed forces and there was minimal technology innovation.
“There is low productivity of plant and machinery and manpower. There is variation of productivity across the factories. OFB has all along supplied products to the armed forces on nomination basis which has not really given incentive to OFB to improve its quality products,” the Ministry said.
The government seeks to improve the efficiency with the proposed tranformation of OFB from a government department to a public sector corporate entity.
“The enhanced combat efficiency of the armed forces and customer satisfation through timely delivery is needed. The move will ensure greater penetration in defence export market. Currently, OFB is a production centre with dependence on expensive foreign technology. Corporate entity to move from production-based to a technology-based organization will enhance self-reliance. A corporate OFB may not require government funding for modernisation and R&D and it can become financially a self-supporting organisation,” the release stated.
