‘Stop wealth drain from the country'

National Labour Party members staging demonstration in front of the Tirupur Kumaran Statue in Tirupur on Sunday

Members of National Labourers Party (NLP) staged a demonstration here on Sunday asking the Central Government to take steps to bring back the huge amounts of black money flowing out of the country into the lockers of foreign banks, among other demands.

Money flow

NLP district secretary H. Mohammed Nizamudin said illegal or tainted money flowing out of the country into secretive accounts in Swiss Banks was morally repugnant since it was a drain of wealth from the country.

“The Government need to take corrective steps at the earliest as the transfer of money into foreign bank accounts involves tax evasion, which otherwise, could have been used for implementing sector-specific welfare schemes for labourers,” Mr. Nizamudin added.

Some statistics point out that the country was ranked fifth among the developing countries with illicit outflows of around $ 22 billion a year between 2002-06.

Cotton prices

The NLP members also sought the intervention of Union Government in resolving the crisis faced by the apparel manufacturing industry owing to escalation in prices of cotton and cotton yarn in the last few months.

Raw materials

“To overcome the problem, the incentives given to export cotton and cotton yarn should be withdrawn so as to make the raw materials available in requisite quantity for domestic consumption,” they said.