– The Liquidation of two state-run paper mills in Assam – the fate of 1200 employees remains undecided.
Recently, the National Company Law Tribunal has ordered the liquidation of two state-run Paper Mills in Assam. With this any hope of the revival of the Cachar Paper Mill and the Nagaon Paper Mill has died despite the workers’ demand and protests that have been going on for many years. The Cachar paper mill has been non-functional since October 2015 and the Nagaon one since March 2017. Both the mills ran under state-owned Hindustan Paper Corporation Limited.
With this, the fate of nearly 1200 full-time workers across the two mills too stands undecided. The workers at the two units owned by the central government have not received salaries for more than two years.
The service of all employees gets terminated from the date of passing of the order, leaving them in the lurch, undecided whether to go to the office any more or not.
Despite efforts by the Revival Action Committee formed by the unions of both the mills and promises made by the state as well as the central governments at various times, the mills failed to provide work or pay pending salaries to their employees.
The agitating employees claim that as many as 55 employees have died and many are on the verge of death due to the hardships caused by the loss of employment. Biswajit Mazumdar, a 35-year-old manager at the Nagaon paper mill had committed suicide by hanging himself at a staff hostel a few days back. He was reportedly worried about expenses of his children’s education.
Production at Nagaon Paper Mill started in 1985, and at Cachar Paper Mill in 1988. Each has an annual capacity of producing 1 lakh tonnes of writing and printing paper. At their peak, the mills provided direct and indirect employment to around 2 lakh people. With the production shut, the mills still have 1200-odd people on their rolls.
Manabendra Chakraborty, chief of the workers’ union at Cachar Paper Mill says, “The government has not said anything. There has been no notice. Employees have to attend duties. They haven’t said you are released. If you do not want our services, release us after settling dues.”
Many attribute the losses of the paper mills to the 2008-09 bamboo flowering crisis in Northeastern states which led to disastrous raw material shortage. The primary raw material for paper mills is bamboo.
Together, raw material crisis and government apathy stretching many years have killed two more state-run units, which have often been habitually accused of inefficiency.
