‘Shutting down jute mills tantamount to destroying sector’

Shutting down state-owned jute mills in the name of modernisation is tantamount to destroying the jute sector, Workers Party of Bangladesh said yesterday.

The party leaders said this while attending a politburo meeting yesterday morning through video conference, chaired by party president Rashed Khan Menon.

They called upon the government to keep the state-owned jute mills open, said a press release.

They said the government is trying to cover up the corruption in jute sector by categorising jute mills as a loss-making corporation and imposing its responsibility on the workers.

It is a strategy of the government to put "one doth the scathe, another hath the scorn" which is just a follow-up to the previous BNP-Jamaat government's policy, they added.

They said that the Prime Minister had formed the Jute Commission in 2010 for the revival of jute industry, which encouraged the discovery of the genome of jute.

"What happened now that led to the suicidal decision to close the jute mills and abolish the jute economy? If the jute mill is closed, darkness will engulf the life of millions of people involved in the sector," they added.

The meeting proposal states that action should be taken against the Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation (BJMC), the officials responsible for corruption in the purchase of jute, irregularities in supply during the season, untimely purchase of jute and failure to market the products. "The corrupt officials are ultimately liable for the collapse of the jute industry," the speakers said.

According to the government's calculations, the amount of loss in the jute industry in the last 44 years is Tk 10,500 crore, which means the yearly loss was only 236.63 crore, they said.

"But who will answer for the amount of subsidy given every year in other sectors including air, rail and electricity. For this reason, all those institutions will be closed? In all these cases, the amount of money being wasted is much less than the amount of loss in 50 years in the jute industry," the party leaders said.

In the proposal, they said the potential of this industry should be utilised by removing the old and outdated machines at jute mills and installing modern, sustainable technology at a cost of Tk 1,200 crore instead of the so-called golden handshake of Tk 5,000 crore which comes at the cost of closing down the jute mills.