“We have jobs only for four days in a week,” said women workers at the match units in Kovilpatti during Chief Minister M.K. Stalin’s visit here on Thursday.
During his brief interaction, some of them went on narrating their woes and expected him to intervene. When he readily agreed to look into their grievances and wanted the officials to study them and find way out, the workers thanked him.
Later, he held discussions with some of the match manufacturers in which the All India Chamber of Match Industries president J Vijay Anand and National Small Match Manufacturers Association president M. Paramasivam and others participated.
They appealed to the Chief Minister to urge the Union government and ban the Chinese made lighters. The lighters, made of poor quality plastics, also spoilt the environment.
The members also said they procured potassium chlorate, a key raw material for producing matches from Karaikal. Sometimes, the prices were very high that they were unable to meet the production cost. Hence, they said they would form a cluster and manufacture the raw material locally, for which they wanted power subsidy from the government.
The advocates’ association from Kovilpatti also gave a representation to the Chief Minister for building an integrated court complex near the existing building, which was over 100 years-old. Some of the senior members from the Bar Association said that V.O. Chidambaranar had practised from the courts here, and that the government should preserve them.
Ministers KKSSR Ramachandran, R.S. Raja Kannappan, Thangam Thennarasu, Geetha Jeevan, Anitha Radhakrishnan and Mano Thangaraj, Thoothukudi District Collector K Senthil Raj, SP L. Balaji Saravanan, senior officials among others were present during the event..
