Butibori workers want Texprint reopened

The workers of the ailing Texprint Overseas in the five star Butibori industrial estate staged an agitation and stopped traffic at the busy MIDC Square demanding reopening of the unit.

The 100 per cent export oriented unit stopped production in January 2005 due to difficult market conditions abroad.

K Bachawat, vice president, Texprint, confirmed that the company had been facing difficulties in the past few years owing to price competitiveness of Chinese products.The unit, set up in 1996, was one of the first premier textile related plant in the industrial complex.

The management had suspended production in January this year, but no worker was retrenched. Workmen launched an agitation when they received a closure notice after production was suspended.

Dilip Malewar, a workers' representative, said the closure notice indicated that the unit would be shut down by October, 2005. It asked workers to report for duty despite there being no work. "Most of us had to sign the muster roll," he said.

Malewar said, the unrest grew when salaries were not paid for three months and even then, only a month's wages were given.

He said, workers were not given wages since May, 2005. They approached the Labour Court and later issued a notice of demonstration to the company's management.

They took to streets when there was no clarification from the management. Hundreds of workers from other units also joined the agitation along with local leaders of political parties. Traffic was stopped for some time before the police intervened and workers were pacified.

A meeting between workers' representatives, the company's management and officials of the Labour Department is to be held before August 30 to sort the matter out.

There was nobody from the management at the unit or the place where the demonstration was held.

The agitation on Friday was launched under the banner of the Nagpur District (Rural) Youth Congress.

The unit employed a workforce of 233 to produce synthetic grey fabric, that was exported to Italy, Singapore, and United Kingdom besides other countries. Raw material was imported from Indonesia and Taiwan.

This was the only export oriented unit of the Kolkata-based, Pavan Lohia group. The promoters had invested Rs 100 crore in the unit and chosen Nagpur due to its central geographic location in the country. The unit, however, could never make profits and was run at 70 per cent capacity even in the best of times. It's installed capacity was rated at 132 lakh metres per annum.

Texprint recorded a turnover of Rs 25/- crore in 2004-05 even after being referred to the Board for Industrial and Financial Re-construction (BIFR) in 2002.