Some 48,000 pieces of hardboards worth Tk2.5 crore lay unsold at Khulna Hardboard Mill, putting the facility in severe crisis.
Dealers have recently been more eager to have their securities returned in the face of the crisis, amid worries that the mill might get out of business.
A severe cash crunch, which resulted in inability to purchase raw materials and furnace oil, led to an indefinite closure of the facility in April 2011.
The government came to its rescue and approved a loan of Tk10 crore, which came with some conditions, in November 2012, and production resumed around eight months later.
In the next three months, hardboards valued at Tk3 crore were produced and each hardboard was priced at Tk540, but dealers termed the price inflated.
The mill authorities then paid part of the dealers’ overdue payments and the dealers urged to re-adjust prices in line with the market price.
But the products produced were not sold, causing the mill to be plagued by fund shortage and eventually halt production.
Khulna Hardboard Dealers Association General Secretary SM Monir Hossain said there was little hope that the mill would go back into operation as far as the existing crisis was concerned.
“Dealers are about to push for having more than Tk20 lakh returned, which they deposited as caution money,” he said.
The association’s Joint Secretary M Shamsul Islam Jahangir said the mill authorities had verbally been asked to return the dealers’ securities and the next step would follow soon.
Mollah Farid Ahmed, convener of Khulna Hardboard Mill Banchao Sangram Parishad, said the industries minister while visiting the facility ensured that production would resume but that was yet to happen.
He said a sense of disappointment had engulfed the mill workers as they had not been paid for three months.
The mill, set up on 9.96 acres of land in Khalishpur in 1965, went into commercial operation a year later. It won a gold medal for outstanding performance in 1980 but was first hit by crisis in 2002 when it announced job cuts.
The facility’s project chief, Md Mamunur Rasul, admitted that the situation was not optimistic as efforts to reopen the facility had been futile and talks were still underway.
“As per the decision of Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation, a tender was floated in April to sell the unsold hardboards but the price offered by the highest bidder was markedly below the expected rate. The tender was later discontinued,” he said.
