Dunlop Top Brass, Staff To Meet Today

In an important development, workers and management representatives of tyre major Dunlop India Ltd are to meet West Bengal labour minister Shanti Ghatak and the state labour secretary, V Subramanian, today in an attempt to discuss the pending problems of the trade unions of the company. The meeting has been called by the state labour ministry.

The meeting, slated to be held at 11.30 am is also expected to be attended by state finance minister Asim Dasgupta. All four unions of the company will be attending the meeting. The four Dunlop unions are: the two Sahaganj unions, affiliated to INTUC and CITU, the All India Dunlop Employees Federation (AIDEF), and the Dunlop head office union.

 

The unions, however, were not able to say who the representatives of the management would be.

Managing director P J Rao was not available for comment when Business Standard attempted to reach him. Sources in the union told Business Standard that the two demands that the union will once again place before the government would be the payment of wages and the resumption of operations as soon as possible.

The workers of the company's Sahaganj unit have not received any wages since November.

Last week, the West Bengal State Electricity Board (WBSEB) threatened to stop power supply of electricity to the Sahaganj unit if dues were not cleared by February 3. The outstandings and the unpaid electricity for December, together amounts to over Rs 1 crore.

However, it has been known through sources that a senior Dunlop official met the chairman of WBSEB, S R Sikdar, and requested the chairman not to cut power supply to Sahaganj. WBSEB appears to have consented, as power supply to the unit has not yet been disconnected.

Recently, in a major boost for the company, Dunlop Rims & Wheels (DRW), the major shareholder of the company, gave its assurance in respect of full proportional subscription of Dunlop's proposed rights issue. DRW, with 39 per cent holding in Dunlop, has also assured the company that it is willing to additionally subscribe to the otherwise unsubscribed portion of the rights issue, if any.

The Dunlop management recently retrieved property documents held by one of the bankers. The company issued an advertisement in respect of the sale of some of its real estate, and has apparently attracted encouraging response. The Mumbai property alone is worth Rs 100 crore.

A company spokesman told Business Standard that a number of Indian corporates and multinationals have expressed their interest in purchasing the property from the company. "There will not be any distress sale. The evaluation of the land has been done by professionals," said the spokesman.

He further said that the sale will take place with both the evaluation and the ruling market trend kept in mind.