Two mills shut indefinitely in West Bengal

Two jute mills — Hastings and North Brook — in Hooghly district of south Bengal have declared suspension of work from Monday, leaving nearly 10,000 workers jobless.

About eight months back, Chandannagar’s Gondalpara Mill and Srirampur’s India Jute Mill were shut, leaving nearly 6,000 workers jobless. Hastings and India Jute Mill and Gondalpara Mill are owned by Sanjay Kajaria, one of the directors of the Indian Jute Mills Association.

Workers of the suspended mills claimed that Gondalpara Jute Mill, India and Hastings Jute Mill have been suspended due to the shortage of raw materials, whereas Champdani’s North Brooke Mill has been suspended for labour unrest.

‘Management problem’

However, former West Bengal Labour Minister and currently State Secretary of Centre of Indian Trade Unions, Anadi Sahu, differed.

“It has nothing to do with the shortage of raw materials. It is an internal management problem. Firstly, they sell the raw materials in the market and tell the workers that there is no raw material. Secondly, the management wants more production but they are paying the workers extremely less and exploiting them, especially in North Brook Jute Mill,” the former Minister said.

Indifferent govt.

“The owner (Sanjay Kajaria) told us that due to financial crisis the mills have no money for buying raw materials. India Jute Mill is closed for the past seven months and Gondalpara Jute Mill for the past eight months,” said Rajesh Jaiswara, a worker in Gondalpara mill.

“The management is absolutely not capable of running any jute mill. He [Mr Kajaria] is even unable to take a loan as he is scared to disclose his property details to the banks. We had a meeting with the owner and the Labour Minister, Moloy Ghatak six to seven times to address this issue. Yet the government has not taken this matter seriously. We even suggested them to sell the mills so that we get saved from losing our jobs to which they agreed in the meeting, yet did not do anything about this matter as well,” Mr. Jaiswara added. Mr Kajaria could not be reached for comment.

Workers of these three jute mills say that Mr. Kajaria has a history of shutting down his jute mills. He shut them eight to nine times between 2009 and 2018.

“The mill was not working properly for the past two months. We have been told that there is no raw material for production and now it suddenly got suspended and I have lost my job,” said Bishnu Sahu, a Hastings Mill worker.