The PSM saga

This refers to the article ‘The saga of a mill’ (June 15, 2020) by Mushtaq Rajpar. The writer has rightly criticized the government for laying off 10000 employees of Pakistan Steel (PSM), but at the same I feel certain aspects have been misrepresented in the article. The writer acknowledges that the PSM once provided respectable jobs to 23000 people and was a profitable organisation. He overlooks the damage caused to the PSM by the PPP government, under whose watch the organisation fell prey to massive corruption.

Unfortunately, instead of offering a solution we fall down the rabbit hole that is blame game. We must extract more from our past than simply whom to pin the blame on; we must learn from our mistakes and correct them. It is true that the privatization of PTCL was a bad decision; Etisalat still owes $800 million to the government and delaying payment for the last 10 years. Pakistan Steel can be revived and we should have accepted the offer of the Russian trade minister who offered $1 billion of assistance to Pakistan in December 2019, but perhaps we were too focused on 18600 acres of land worth Rs200 billion, as the writer points out. The conclusion raises a very valid question; who has failed us? This once proud national asset should have been looked after, our lack of wisdom has been the undoing of the PSM and its employees.

Mukhtar Ahmed

Karachi