Production has been hit at the Asian Paints factory near Nanjangud which has been shut down from the last two days owing to an agitation by local farmers demanding that they be employed at the unit in lieu of the land sold for establishing the plant.
A spokesperson for the company said permanent staff and engineers at the automated plant were being prevented from entering the unit as a result of which it was shut from two days and production had been hit.
Asian Paints released a statement on Wednesday which said the company had offered jobs to all the eligible land-losers within the Mysuru region in a facility specifically set up to offer on-roll jobs to such persons as per the terms and conditions agreed upon by the company with farmers and the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB).
The statement said additional facility had been created at a cost of ₹14 crore to accommodate the land-losers as the existing paint facility was highly automated. “Given the qualification of the land-losers, they cannot work in the plant where there are automated systems which require qualified engineers,” the statement added.
The farmers were trained and paid stipend during their training period from June 2019 to August 2020 but the situation changed suddenly in the last four to six weeks wherein the farmers are not ready to take the on-roll permanent jobs, according to Asian Paints.
Badagalpura Nagendra of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha alleged that the company had defaulted on its promise of providing jobs locally and instead want the farmers to go a unit at Hebbal (on the outskirts of Mysuru).
He claimed that as per the Labour Department report, the unit can create additional jobs that is non-technical in nature but the company was reluctant to do so and averred that the agitation would continue.
Asian Paints established two mega paint manufacturing facilities in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh with a total investment of ₹2,400 crore. Both the plants have an installed capacity of 3,00,000 kl/year and together employ about 1,200 people. The company said shutdown of the plant and the current situation were not conducive for industries to invest in the region as it creates uncertainty on continuity and ease of doing business.
