RailEnquiry

The lives of an estimated 5,000 labourers, daily wage earners and other employees of the cotton processing industry in Adilabad town lie woefully scattered following a major industrialist house going bust recently.The sudden closure of some big factories in the wake of a financial scam by the industrial house in question has brought untold miseries to the poor families working in these units.Finding work elsewhere poses a challenge everyday for these workers who have worked all their lives in the cotton ginning and pressing units, cottonseed oil mills or soyabean solvent plant.“Eating two square meals a day is a dream now as I do not find work on six of the seven days that I go to the labour adda,” reveals Gedam Ashok, who used to feed raw cotton in the ginning in one of the units of the now closed G.S. Oils factory.The Ranadivenagar slum, abutting the largest of the closed factories belonging to the failed industrialists, where a large chunk of the labour force lives, is not the pulsating entity it used to be any longer. While many of the workers leave in search of work, many have abandoned the colony without notice. “We were removed from our jobs without notice just before the factory was shut,” says Lanka Karthik, a former supervisor in G.S. Oils, who has not landed any work as there are no openings in the cotton processing industry that suit him.

Shops close

Many of the pan kiosks, tea joints and meat shops in Ranadivenagar slum have also closed down given the decline in purchasing power of the inhabitants.The local liquor belt shop seems to be the worst hit as its location was shifted soon after the closure of the mills.The railway stands to lose about Rs.8 crore per annum by way of freight charges paid by the company. The railways carried consignments of deoiled cottonseed cake and chicken feed as far as West Bengal’s border with Bangladesh.

V. Annapurna, a former councillor in the Rampur industrial area suggests that the government intervene to take hold of the situation.

She says the problems being faced by the poor labourers could turn into an unrest if things continue to remain the same.