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The Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) has dismissed reports on a number of accidents between 2014 and 2019 due to poor quality ammunition manufactured by them and stated it “does not accept the figures.”
“For the accidents between January 2015 to December 2019, in which defect investigation has been completed, only 19% of the cases are attributable to OFB,” a spokesperson of the board stated.
Further, out of the overall variety of accidents through which defect investigation had been accomplished, solely 2% of the instances through which casualties had been reported had been attributable to the OFB, he said.
As reported earlier, in accordance to inner information of the Army between 2014 and 2019, there have been 403 incidents due to poor quality of ammunition manufactured by OFB, due to which the Army suffered 25 deaths and 146 accidents and in addition disposed of ₹960 crore value of ammunition earlier than the shelf life was full.
Between 2011 and 2018, there had been greater than 125 accidents involving ammunition procured from sources apart from OFB, each home and overseas, the OFB spokesperson stated, stating solely instances the place OFB ammunition was concerned had been being selectively reported.
“It must be emphasised here that most of these accidents involve vintage ammunition manufactured prior to 2006 when inspection of all input materials was undertaken by the Director General Quality Assurance (DGQA) and OFB had no control on the quality of input material,” the spokesperson stated.
In reality, after 2005-06, when the duty for inspection of enter materials was given to OFB, there had been a lower within the variety of accidents, he said.
MP’s attraction
In a letter to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi appealed for a rethink on the federal government’s resolution on corporatisation of the OFB.
“There has also been an unfortunate attempt to tarnish its [OFB’s] image and make it a fit case for privatisation,” Ms. Chaturvedi stated. The resolution of the federal government to corporatise the ordnance factories went in opposition to the assurances given by 4 earlier Defence Ministers to the federations, she claimed.
“It also goes against the statement of the government before the Parliamentary Standing Committee, that converting OFB into corporate entities is not a viable proposal, due to fluctuation of the requirement of the armed forces and also the ordnance factories have to maintain spare capacity as a war reserve,” Ms. Chaturvedi stated within the letter.
She added that she obtained a illustration from a number of staff federations that 99% of the staff had rejected the transfer of the federal government.
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