The state-owned mill at Khalishpur will be finally closed from August 1. All its workers and employees were terminated earlier by the government.

Besides, government will allocate Tk 1200 crore for smooth running of 18 jute mills in the country out of which Tk 138 crore is likely to be available as bank loan, sources said yesterday.

Apart from this financial allocation and bank loan, government has decided to allocate more Tk 200 crore for these jute mills to purchase raw jute, said Director (Finance) of BJMC Md Harisuddin who came to Khulna on Friday at the head of a three-member team to visit all state-owned jute mills in Khulna-Jessore industrial belt.

Two other members of the BJMC team are General Manager (Admin) Md Abu Saeed and Deputy General Manager (Marketing) Nalini Ranjan Roy.

They held an emergency meeting from 5 pm to 8.30 pm on Friday at the zonal office of BJMC. It was attended by all high officials and general managers of all the eight state-owned jute mills in Khulna-Jessore industrial belt.

Members of the BJMC team yesterday visited the jute mills and held meetings separately with their general managers.

The Director (Finance) of BJMC who is heading the three-member team did not say if arrear wages of terminated workers of other jute mills would at all be paid or not.

A total of 5,427 workers of five out of eight state-owned jute mills have so far be retrenched by BJMC.

Police on Thursday forced members and volunteers of the newly formed National Relief Committee (NRC) to close two gruel kitchens opened at Khalishpur to provide members of workers' families of Peoples Jute Mills and Platinum Jute Mwith cooked rice and lentil.

NRC co-ordinator Alamgir Kabir Friday evening alleged that police raided houses of volunteers and beat up some of them for distributing food at gruel kitchens.