While Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is boasting of peaceful industrialisation and is committed to create job opportunity for the unemployed, strangely, the district administration here has backed the efforts of the Nilachal Refractory limited (NRl) to render 420 contract labourers and 61 permanent employees jobless by closing the unit.
Sources said IPICOl in collaboration with a Belpahar unit had set up the refractory over 200 acres of Government land at Gundichapada in Dhenkanal in 1978. The bricks produced from the firm were generally used for construction of furnaces.
later, the unit was transferred to Tata. When the employees working in Tata were expecting their own development and that of the industry after the ownership having gone to Tata, practically nothing of the sort happened.
On the contrary, Tata wanted to close the unit and started to retrench the employees one after another under voluntary retirement scheme (VRS). It also declared the refractory industry as a sick unit.
In 2006, one Kolkata based IJ Group entered into an agreement with the BIFR (Bureau of Industrial Finance and Rehabilitation) to own up the refractory unit. Reportedly, IJ Group changed the name and style of the refractory industry as Nilachal Refractory limited (NRl).
Curiously from the beginning, the IJ Group violating the Contract labour Regulation Act, 1970 engaged 420 contract labourers, while it only kept 61 old employees in its payroll as permanent employees.
Meanwhile, the NRl has stopped production since April 1, 2013 and ever since has started retrenching the 420 contract labourers without assigning any reason to the Government. Besides, the NRl has locked out the industry with the help of police on February 19 last to avoid any untoward incident.
When contacted, district labour officer Pradeep Kumar Mohanty said the NRl lockout was a temporary process and a move was on to forge reconciliation between the employees and management. However, union leader Akhil Patnaik alleged that the NRl was interested to sell the industry at a high price as the land cost in Dhenkanal was high at present.