Trouble at Shree Renuka Sugar's Haldia Plant: Report
Haldia: Contract workers at Haldia sugar refinery facility of Shree Renuka Sugars on Wednesday staged protest following non-renewal of their service contracts.
"Our plant is almost idle for the past 17 months without any production due to various factors. Since September 2013 till date, the plant was in operation barely for 53 days. We have decided not to renew the contracts, that ended March 31, for contractual workers," a senior company official told PTI.
"There is no question of suspension of work as the plant is not into production due to viability reasons," he said when asked.
The official said more than half of the 157 permanent workers of the plant had been relocated to other facilities of the company.
"With regard to the 285 contractual employees, we had an agreement with the contractors till March 31, 2015 and we are not in a position to renew the contracts except of a few contractual workers for essential services such as fire tender operators, drivers, security, housekeeping and canteen," company sources said.
The reasons that led to unviability of the sugar refinery are high operation cost at port, import duty increase from zero to 25 per cent and non-receipt of industrial incentives of Rs 99 crore from West Bengal government, they said. The company was into refining imported sugar mostly from Bazil at the Haldia plant, sources said.
