Tamil Nadu - Erode   

Dyers discontented with Government

Karthik Madhavan

`No help rendered to set up eco-processing park'

ERODE: Dyers, processors and those in the finishing business in this textile town are unhappy with the present All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) Government, and their anger is palpable.

Their grouse

Their grouse is that the Government has failed to help them set up an eco-processing park in the SIPCOT industrial estate in Perundurai by reducing the price of the land.

The 1,000-odd units, mostly running on a very small capital, employ about one lakh workers, whose choice could decide the fate of candidates in the fray in this Assembly constituency.

Efforts fail

In the first few years of the AIADMK rule, when an acre of developed land at the industrial estate cost about Rs. 6 lakh, the members demanded it at half the cost.

It did not materialise, though. Subsequently, the cost of the land has escalated to Rs. 9 lakh. Their efforts at buying undeveloped land - without road, water and power facilities - also failed.

"All these five years, we made repeated representations to Chennai, but they failed," rues a leading processing businessman. They also complain that AIADMK leaders in the district failed to help them despite knowing their plight.

A processor charges the local AIADMK leaders with not doing enough.

Not feasible

Complementing their woes is the High Court order on setting up an effluent treatment plant - unfeasible for many a small scale units, and global competition.

In fact, the Collector, D. Karthikeyan, wrote a letter to the Managing Director of SIPCOT suggesting a 50 per cent price concession, but nothing materialised.

Expensive affair

For them, setting up individual treatment plants was an expensive affair because it would jack up the processing cost of a metre of cloth by a rupee, forcing many of them out of business, given the narrow competition in a global environment.

The Erode MLA, K.S. Thennarasu, also the president of a dyers and processors association, acknowledges that the Government had not done "enough" for them.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

70 booths set up in forest areas
Dyers discontented with Government
Congress bid to enter AIADMK fortress
CM promises end to pollution
Only nine women in the poll race
Wave in State favourable to us, says Ramadoss
Killed in accident

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu