BHEL to recruit 4,000 persons annually for 3 yrs

Public sector Bharat Heavy Electrical (BHEL) would recruit about 4,000 people, including executive engineers, annually at least for the next three years as the company is embarking on new joint ventures, a top company official said today.

The public sector undertaking (PSU) has sent a proposal to the Railway Ministry to set up a manufacturing unit at the Railway Workshop in Kalcharapar in West Bengal.

The proposed joint venture would enable BHEL to produce self-propulsion vehicles along with delicate components for the Railways on an assured off-take.

B Prasada Rao, Chairman and Managing director, told reporters here that the company planned to enhance the head count to 52,000-55,000 by the end of 2012.

At present, more than 45,000 people are working in various BHEL units.

Rao said talks were on with employees unions on wage revision and a new wage structure was expected to be in place within a few months. He said the company also planned to start industrial training institutes to overcome the difficulty in getting artisans for BHEL's sub-contractors.

BHEL would invest Rs 235 crore on its Vishakapatnam plant to enable it produce power plant equipment and components. "The order position for power plant equipment is quite encouraging with pending orders worth about Rs 1.3 lakh crore, which could be cleared in three or four years", he said.

Of the 78,000 MW capacity addition in the current five year plan period, BHEL had bagged orders for 44,000 MW or equivalent to 55 per cent of the quantity. He said BHEL had received a fresh order of around Rs 990 crore from the Railways to supply about 150 electric locomotives. The Jhansi unit would manufacture and supply the engines.

The PSU recently got another big order of Rs 5,600 crore to supply three 660 MW supercritical thermal sets for the 1980 MW Prayagraj Thermal Power Project at Bara in Uttar Pradesh. In the current quarter, the company had maintained over 21 per cent growth in revenue earnings.

The trend was expected to continue and top line growth would be more than the present one by end of this fiscal, while bottom line would range from 35 to 40 per cent, he said.

He said works on the joint venture projects for additional power generation of 2x800 MW and 3x800 MWs each in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka respectively could be completed in the next two months.