The strike by various industries owing to the introduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST) has rendered around 26,000 workers jobless in Virudhunagar district.
However, the silver lining in the turmoil has been the announcement by the fireworks industry of withdrawing its indefinite strike on Wednesday after six days of shut down.
Thereby, over 8 lakh persons – directly and indirectly employed by the industry – would resume their work from Thursday.
Powerloom
Virudhunagar district has around 10,000 powerlooms that are mainly concentrated around Aruppukottai, Rajapalayam and Srivilliputtur. The powerlooms, as part of the State-wide agitation, began an indefinite closure from Wednesday. Earlier, they had closed down their units for three days in June end.
“We have got around 7,000 powerlooms in and around Aruppukottai employing over 20,000 persons in various processing stages from yarn dyeing to weaving of saris,” said secretary of Aruppukottai Small powerlooms and clothes manufacturers’ association V. Arivanantham.
The powerlooms are run as a cottage industry with each house having two to six powerlooms. The jobs are related to dyeing, sizing, warping, weaving among others.
“The yarn travels around the streets or neighbouring villages for these different processes. Under the conventional taxation policy, our industry was exempted from all kinds of tax. As ours is a sick industry, it has been enjoying free power supply for several years. But, now suddenly the stringent rules with levying GST at every process has become a problem for us,” Mr. Arivanantham said.
No material can be sent out without a computer generated receipt with all the details of the loom owners and the service provider. “With just two powerlooms, we cannot afford buying computers and have internet service. Besides, most of us have dropped out of elementary school and would not be able to operate the computers,” said M. Pandiyarajan, president of Rajapalayam, Avarampatti small powerlooms and clothes manufacturers’ association.
Rajapalayam has around 2,500 looms and Srivilliputtur some 500 looms, he added. Most of the service providers, who also run their units like cottage industry, do not have any registration. “If we deal with such unregistered service providers, we would automatically become ineligible for claiming input credit and thus end up paying over 40% tax,” Mr. Arivanantham said.
Cinema theatres
Over 1,300 workers employed directly and indirectly in 33 cinema theatres have also been rendered jobless since July 1 when the theatre owners across the State began an indefinite strike.
The theatre owners have been demanding to do away with 30% local body tax after implementation of 28% GST.
“It is better to close down the theatres instead of ending up paying 58% tax by running them when even footing of electricity bill has become a big task,” said M. Ratnakumar, an office-bearer of theatre owners’ association.
As a result of the strike, people involved in running the show, including projector operator to those manning the ticket counters and parking lots, manufacturers of eatables and those selling them in canteens have been rendered jobless, he added.
Every theatre has got around 40 such workers, he added.
Matches
Though a good number of match units in the State were on strike against higher GST, some 110 bigger units, affiliated to All India Chamber of Match Industry, were functioning in and around Sivakasi.
“We are for same rate of tax for all types of match – semi-mechanised and mechanised – manufacturers so that tax evasion is plugged,” said its president G. Nagarajan.
