Adequate supply of manpower a challenge for steel industry: Report

NEW DELHI: Adequate supply of skilled labour could pose a big challenge for the steel industry which will need 2.85 lakh more such workers to treble the annual capacity to 300 million tonnes within 10-12 years.

As per estimates by the domestic steel industry, as India increases its capacity from around 100 MT now, an additional 2.85 lakh workforce would be required, considering the productivity at 700 tonnes of crude steel produced per person, per year.

"There are a lot of challenges to be faced as India plans to raise capacity to 300 MT per annum. Apart from fund and equipment, getting adequate supply of manpower is a big problem," an official with a private firm said.

The Indian steel industry employs around two lakh people at present, including around 97,000 by SAIL itself. Factoring that 15 per cent of total manpower in a steel plant are engineers, the state-run steel firm estimates that there would be an additional requirement of 43,000 engineers in the industry by 2024-25.

Metallurgy might be a viable option for students as the steel industry would fill up to 30 per cent of its projected engineers' need from among metallurgists.

"Taking into account the requirement for research and development an other supporting activities, there would be an additional requirement of around 15,000 metallurgists for the steel industry itself in next decade," SAIL Chairman C S Verma said. India has around 30 institutes which teach metallurgy at present. The total seats in these institutes is about 1,800.