Delays caused by a strike by Maddhapara granite miners have rendered resumption of rock extraction at the site uncertain for a few more months.
The new contractor – Germania-Trest Consortium (GTC) – could not start the recruitment process in time after the contract of its predecessor ended on December 31 last year as the miners had imposed a strike since November 25.
The miners discontinued the strike from January 23 in the face of a lawsuit. They had been abstaining from work, demanding making their jobs permanent.
“We started fresh recruitment on January 27 to replace 308 miners of the MGMCL, as its contract with the outsourcing company Blue Star ended on December 31 last year,” GTC Chairman Serazul Islam Kazi said.
Asked when they could resume rock extraction, the GTC chairman expressed hope that the recruitment process would complete in two months after which rock extraction would resume.
“As we have no miner at present, extraction of rock at the mine depends on competition of the recruitment process. The final stage [before resuming work] might need a couple more months,” Serazul told the Dhaka Tribune.
Extraction of hard rock at the mine has been suspended since the miners went on the strike, causing huge losses.
From January the Germania-Trest Consortium was supposed to start working at the mine operated by the Maddhapara Granite Mining Company Ltd (MGMCL), a concern of Petrobangla under the energy ministry.
The MGMCL – the country’s only hard rock company – has been mining rocks at the site since 1994.
A total of 308 workers of the MGMCL Workers-Employees’ Union staged a demonstration outside the company building as part of their indefinite strike, pressing home a five-point demand.
MGMCL Managing Director SAF Md Najmul Ahsan Haider yesterday told the Dhaka Tribune that they had failed to start extracting hard rock from the mine because of the strike and this caused the company immense loss.
Najmul said they had directed the new contractor to start the work as early as possible.
He said: “The GTC will recruit both trained and untrained manpower.”
Khairul Islam, president of the miners’ union, claimed that the authority would not be able to start the extraction in three months as the new recruits would take from six months to a year to become well-trained.
Meanwhile, the union leaders have gone into hiding as they have been accused in a case filed by the MGMCL authorities on January 24.
On September 2 last year, the state-owned MGMCL signed a deal with the GTC to produce about 9.2m tonnes of hard rock worth more than Tk2,000 crore over six years.
