Employees of the Ordnance Factory Tiruchirappalli (OFT) on Wednesday staged a demonstration against the ministry of defence for deciding to stop procuring small rifles from OFT and three other government rifle factories.
As many as 1,600 OFT technical staff owing allegiance to various employees unions demanded that the ministry allow OFT, Ordnance Factory in Nalanda, Small Arms Factory in Kanpur and Rifle Factory in Ishapore to go on with manufacturing of rifles with state-of-the-art features for supply to the Indian Army instead of importing such arms from foreign countries and allowing private companies to manufacture arms in India.
S Chandrasekaran, president of the National Defence Workers Union-INTUC, said, "OFT and three other government arms factories have been manufacturing small rifle 5.56mm INSAS for supply to the Indian Army since 1999. OFT manufactured 4.5 lakh 5.66 mm INSAS rifles so far. As the Indian Army recently decided to procure multipurpose rifles, MoD decided to stop procuring small rifles from OFT after March 2013. OFT now has to supply 19,300 5.56mm INSAS rifles to the Indian Army to reach this year's target."
"Nearly 70% of our staff are involved in small rifle manufacturing. Rest of us are engaged in other arms like under barrel grenade launchers (UBGL). By stopping the manufacture of small rifles, our staff could suffer financial loss as they will not get overtime duty and other benefits," he added.
Chandrasekaran also said, "Moreover, the government has decided to import multipurpose rifles from Israel and Austria and allow private companies for rifle manufacturing even though the rifle factories are equipped to produce such arms. Last year, OFT staff designed the latest rifle called 'Trichy Assault Rifle'(TAR). After putting it to various experiments, the MoD shelved the idea to procure TAR for the Indian Army for unknown reasons."
