Dunlop Asked To Revoke Work Suspension At Sahaganj Unit

Tyre major Dunlop India Ltd was yesterday asked by the West Bengal government to revoke the suspension of work notice at its Sahaganj factory in Hooghly district, resume operations and resolve the issue with its workers at the earliest.

The move came even as the Manu Chabbria-controlled Dun-lop management was believed to have put up a similar notice at its Ambattur factory in Tamil Nadu yesterday. While trade union sources in Dunlop confirmed the Ambattur notice, there was no official confirmation till late last night.

When contacted, official sources could not ascertain whether such a suspension of work notice had been issued at the Ambattur factory too, but said there was a major possibility.

 

The state governments directive on the Sahaganj factory came at its tripartite meeting held with the Dunlop management and the two Sahaganj trade unions affiliated to Citu and Intuc.

The government was represented by labour minister Santi Ghatak who called the meeting, finance minister Asim Dasgupta and agriculture minister Naren Dey, an MLA from the Chinsurah constituency under which Sahaganj falls.

Dunlop India has also been asked to furnish details on its sales proceeds and inter-corporate deposits to the Jyoti Basu government as well as to the United Bank of India, which is part of the bankers consortium for the company.

Though the state government did not set down any specific time-limit for Dunlop to resolve the issue, it has advised the company to immediately revoke the suspension of notice as well settle overdue wages for workers at the Sahagunj unit, said Ashok Pal, senior vice-president of the Citu-affiliated Sahaganj union.

A senior state labour ministry source confirmed that the company had been asked to revoke the notice even as Pal said: The finance minister assured the union leaders that if the issue is not resolved soon, the government will be forced to take stern action against the company.

It was not known till late last night whether Dunlop had arrived at any firm decision on the matter following the tripartite meeting.

Dunlop managing director P J Rao was out of station and, hence, could not be reached. Several efforts to contact the companys official spokesman in Calcutta also proved futile.