Various political parties including DMDK, MDMK, CPI and CPI(M) had formed a struggle committee and had been organising series of protests against the move.
The factory, where about 3000 persons were working with the production of 3000 tonnes of cement in 1980s, was now employing only 80 people and manfactured only 300 tonnes of cement, says Soundirarajan, the Factory Protection committee president.
"There is demand for cement and its price is increasing day by day. All private cement units are minting money due to the high price of cement. But the government was in favour of closure of the unit. It had already issued circular transferring the employees to its Ariyalur unit. The Local people,workers,and political parties had been organising various agitations against the Government move since December 2014", he said.
One reason attributed was the quality of raw material available in the 3000 acres of land, including asbestos and lime was not good to meet the national standard.
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"It had been proved in the laboratory that the raw material was of good quality", Soundirarajan claimed.
Another reason for the proposed closure was that raw material availability would not be enough to sustain the production in the factory.
The IBM report says that the total quantity of Limestone avaiable in the belt was 420 million tonnes, enough to run the factory for another 50 years, he said.
M Asokan, Virudhunagar District President of CITU charged that there was "ulterior" motive in weakening the cactory.
Duraiswamy, a top official of the factory denied that the factory was being closed and said salaries were being paid to the workers. However circulars had been issued to transfer some employees to Ariyalur, he said.