With two rounds of ministerial-level talks held during the past two days with owners of closed cashew factories drawing a blank, another attempt is being made on Friday with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan inviting the owners for talks in Thiruvananthapuram.
CITU leader and former Minister P.K Gurudasan told mediapersons here on Thursday that talks initiated by the government had resulted in the reopening of 14 cashew factories that had been kept closed. But majority of the factories still remain closed. This situation has badly hit the livelihood of thousands of cashew workers, most of them women.
Mr. Gurudasan said the talks called by the Chief Minister were with a cashew processor who owned 18 factories in Kollam that had been kept closed. The first round of the talks was with Minister for Cashew Industry J. Mercykutty Amma in Kollam earlier this week. The second round was with Ms. Mercykutty and Labour Minister T.P. Ramakrishnan in Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday.
He said that cashew workers under the banner of the CITU-affiliated Cashew Workers Centre would march to the head office of this chain of cashew factories on Friday demanding the reopening of the factories. The owner insisted that if the factories were reopened it would result in huge losses because of the high cost of production following the wage revision.
