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Yellamma cotton mill on the verge of closure

H.S. Narasimha Kumar

Workers given option of voluntary retirement

DAVANGERE: Another cotton mill is on the verge of closure in Davangere, which was once considered the Manchester of Karnataka as it had a large number of cotton mills. The Sri Yellamma Cotton, Wool and Silk Mill, which is close to celebrating its golden jubilee year, may shut down in the next few days.

Many cotton mills including the Davangere Cotton Mill, Shankar Textile Mills, Chigateri Textile Mills, and Chandrodaya Mills, which were once manufacturing fine cotton, have shut down operations in the recent past after incurring heavy losses.

The Yellamma cotton mill, which was earlier owned by a private company, sustained losses and was almost closed down around five years ago.

The mill was brought under the National Textile Corporation, which managed to run it for the past few years.

Debts

However, the mill has accumulated a debt of over Rs. 42 crores and is not in a position to continue functioning.

The mill reportedly offered a modified voluntary retirement scheme to (MVRS) to its employees. Only a few employees will continue to work in the mill till formalities of closing the establishment are completed.

Efforts are on to provide compensation to the workers. There are around 309 workers at the mill and of them 115 are permanent staff members.

According to sources at the mill, the NTC does not plan to hand over the mill to private companies on contract. Of the 53 mills of the NTC, only 10 are said to be registering a profit and five other mills are running on no profit-no loss basis. The cotton mills in the district have been spinning yarn from indigenous cotton, of medium and short staple kinds, for over six decades.

Though cotton is largely purchased locally, the bigger mills used to import cotton to spin yarn of a higher thread count. The cotton mills used to manufacture long-cloth, shirting, dhotis, saris, towels, and bed sheets.

According to a resident here, the demand for the cloth produced at these mills was so high, people used to queue up outside showrooms of the mill to place orders.

Davangere was the centre of textile mills and ginning factories in the erstwhile Mysore State. It was a large trading centre owing to its location. At one time, cotton was grown in more than 20,000 acres here because of the number of mills in the area.

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