Massive protest against selling of sugar cooperatives (India)

[struggle4progress]

2,000 mill staffers observe strike; 500 farmers, various dept employees join stir; threaten to move HC

Express News Service

Kharar, May 4: A MASSIVE rally protesting against the proposed sale of Cooperative Sugar Mills (CSM) in Punjab was today held at Cooperative Sugar Mill in Morinda near Kharar. As many as 2,000 officials and employees of 14 Cooperative Sugar Mills of the state, who were on mass casual leave, and over 500 farmers and employees from the PSEB, health and education departments of the state government took part in the protest under the banner of Common Cadre Officers’ Association and Joint Action Committee of CSM Workers’ Unions.

Raising anti-government and anti-Congress slogans during the daylong rally, the protesters not only threatened to move the High Court against the state government’s disinvestment plan but also warned the government against liquidating profit-earning mills to ‘‘benefit its near and dear ones.’’

The protesting employees said that not only mill staffers would face retrenchment but sugarcane growers would also be at the receiving end in case state-run mills are liquidated.

The leaders alleged that ‘wrong’ policies of the state government and ‘‘non-upgradation and non-modernisation’’ of cooperative sugar mills have thrown the state sugar industry in doldrums. <snip>

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=127828