A round offer for voluntary retirement by the management of Fertilizers and Chemicals Travancore (FACT) has not received much response with only six persons submitting their applications. The VRS scheme was offered to unskilled, non-managerial personnel of the company.
However, sources said that the response was poor. The company management, it is learnt, expected between 100 and 150 personnel to take the golden handshake. One of the reasons attributed to the poor response is the expected turnaround of the company, which has been in dire straits for a long while now.
The recent infusion of a loan promises to help the company turn around as it is reported to be improving its general performance.
Besides, trade union sources had said that they were not in favour of encouraging voluntary retirement. The union had felt that there would not be much response to the VRS offer. The trade unions had also said that the terms and conditions of the VRS scheme were only attractive to those who had a short service term.
It was the third time that FACT management offered VRS to its employees. The earlier two rounds saw around 1,000 employees opting to take voluntary retirement. The employee strength of the public sector company has come down substantially over the years and its now stands at 2,340.
FACT has intensified activities to increase production with the infusion of funds in the form of a loan of Rs. 1,000 crore earlier this year.
Meanwhile, FACT’s subsidiary FEDO has jobs in hand worth Rs.252 crore and it is executing major jobs of campus development of NIT, Nagaland.
