ITHARI: Resham Purification Centre here in the eastern region has shut down recently. Its machines, worth of crores of rupees, stopped operating after the Ministry for Agriculture reduced investment in the centre this fiscal year. Re-reeling machine, thread binding machine and drier machine including other machines have also stopped operating along with the reeling machine at Resham Purification Centre. More than 32 workers lost their jobs after the closure of the centre. The workers have been demanding to reopen the center at the earliest but the management has told them that it is not in a position to do so as investment

has been reduced a lot in this sector. Centre chief Ganga

Yadav said they were compelled to shut the centre as the government drastically reduced the investment in the silk thread production sector this fiscal year.

Yadav added, “ The government had allocated 1248 rupees for the production

of a kg of silk thread last fiscal year. It has been reduced to

517 rupees per kg this

year.’’ He queried, “How can we continue the production when the price of raw materials and the wages of workers have been increasing, and at a time that the government has reduced the investment?”

He lamented that though they had written to the department of Agriculture Ministry to increase the investment in this sector the department had told them to either give the machines of the centre on contract or stop production.

The centre was producing silk thread of worth Rs 60 lakh annually. Farmers of the area are also concerned as the government reduced the budget instead of encouraging them. Farmers in the eastern region have planted Kimbu in hundreds of hectares of land for the promotion of silk thread.

The government had run different awareness programmes for the promotion of silk thread in the past years. Now, however, it reduced the investment this year suddenly.

Yadav said that farmers destroyed their Kimbu plants in 80 hectares of land in Ilam district. Staffers at the centre and the farmers alleged that the government was discouraging the farmers and those involved in this sector.

Earlier, there was strict provision that the raw materials for silk thread had to be taken to the purification centre itself for selling but this year the rule was not followed strictly.

Worker Bimala Dahal said there used to be a crowd of farmers at the centre but now it is deserted. The machines have also become useless. There used to be at least 30 women workers in the centre, some of whom had been working there for 12 years.