Members of the Birla Tyres Workers’ Union (BTWU) staged a demonstration in front of the District Labour Office on Monday demanding its intervention to run the unit whose production has been stalled since five months and employees have not received salary for over six months.
Union leader Rajendra Bal said that although it was assured by the management that the unit would begin its operation from February after demerger, the promise has become a distant dream.
“The demerger was completed on November 8 last year. Now it is no longer a unit of the Kesoram group and has on the other hand become a separate entity ‘Birla Tyres Limited’. Earlier, it was promised that as soon as demerger would be completed, the new entity would seek funds from banks to run operations afresh from February. Yet, despite completion of the process, we are hopeless as the plant has not started till date,” said Bal.
“We doubt the demerger process made in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) is fishy as neither the authorised liquidator nor the Ministry is aware of the process. More so, we are not optimistic of the company’s future as nothing is clear till date and who would infuse fund to meet a burden of about Rs 3,000 crore. Hence, we desperately seek intervention of the State Labour Department and the Central Government to resolve our crisis,” Bal said.
