Kerala   

CPI may endorse SEZs with rider

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The CPI is likely to endorse a proposal for sanctioning Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the State only if the LDF government works specific provisions into the SEZ scheme to prevent exploitative employment practices such as indeterminate working hours and curbs on workers’ rights.

The party might well insist on legislation to ensure that.

The party State executive will take up the issue at its two-day meeting beginning here on Friday and is likely to come up with its proposals on it.

There are two views in the party on the subject. One position is that being largely exploitative industrial enclaves, the State will do well not to have SEZs.

The other is that the party should not turn its back on SEZs but must try to ensure protection of labour rights even as the State joins the national trend towards the establishment of more and more SEZs.

The latter view is likely to prevail and the party may well put before the LDF State committee a set of proposals relating to labour rights when it meets next to consider, among other things, the SEZ issue.

The CPI State secretariat had constituted a three-member committee comprising AITUC State general secretary Kanam Rajendran, party’s Kollam district secretary Prakash Babu and Thiruvananthapuram district secretary P. Ramachandran Nair to study the issue and submit a report.

The report is ready and was supposed to be considered by the party State secretariat at its meeting here on Thursday.

However, the secretariat could not do so as party State secretary Veliyam Bhargavan could not attend the meeting.

Senior CPI leaders told The Hindu that the report would certainly be taken up by the party State executive as a decision in the matter could not be delayed any further.

Talking to The Hindu over phone, Mr. Bhargavan said his party was not ready to sacrifice the labour rights won through struggles over the last 150 years to facilitate establishment of SEZs in the State.

The CPI, he said, would also insist that only land absolutely essential for setting up SEZs is considered for the purpose as land mafia have bought up large tracts of land in different parts of the State for speculative gains at a later stage.

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