NTC mills may stop work due to raw material shortage

Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala

Jobs of hundreds of employees at the National Textile Corporation’s Vijayamohonini mills as well as four other mills in the State are at stake as raw materials are yet to be supplied. Though the mills were re-opened on March 31, 2021, after a year of remaining shut due to COVID-19, these were closed again in June. The management has now informed that the apprentice workers who enjoy the same benefits as permanent workers will no longer receive their salary from June.

Even when the mill reopened temporarily, the contract workers were not asked to return to work. Many of them, who have worked in the mills for decades, survive now doing odd jobs.

M T Antony, Secretary, Trivandrum Textile Workers’ Union (CITU), said that, NTC has not taken any efforts to supply raw materials (cotton and polyester) to the mill continuously and that they have been receiving only a percentage of the salaries since the outbreak of the pandemic and in June they did not receive any salary at all. 

The 23 spinning mills of the NTC, under the Union Textile Ministry, remained closed over a year since March 2020, with no steps taken to make them functional even after the Centre gave nod for factories and industries to open in May. The Corporation has maintained that the mills will function once the large pile of unsold yarn stock is sold off.