Rajdeep Roy appeals to release 24 months' pending salaries to HPC employees

During the zero hour of Lok Sabha session, Silchar MP Rajdeep Roy appealed to the Heavy Industries minister to “at least” release “24 months’ salary” to the employees of the two defunct mills in Pachgram and Jagi Road, Assam.

Both the mills are operated by Hindustan Paper Corporation Ltd and the salaries were last disbursed on a regular basis 35 months back. Production is shut in both the Mills, but employees continue to visit.

Shedding light to the plight of the people he said, “Both the mills employed around 5000 individual and over 25,000 lives depends on these two mills. It has been almost three years the mills are shut. Through newspapers we got to know that 53 people have committed suicide. It has been written that they are unable to fulfil basic needs of the families that is dependent on them and so the heads of the families are committing suicide.”

Roy added that a delegation had met the former Minister of Heavy Industries, “He had told us that he would visit both the mills before sending the matter to NCLT. However, he did not and in fact he has now decided to opt out of Government. It is my request to the new Heavy Industries minister to look into the issue and at least release 2 years’ salary.

Shiv Sena’s Arvind Sawant was the Minister so far but now he has quit owing to his party’s differences with BJP. Prakash Javadekar has taken charge and Roy’s appeal was directed to Javadekar.