Mysuru: The employees of Falcon Tyres, along with their family members including their children have threatened to stage indefinite protest in front of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s residence in Ramakrishnanagar if their issues are not met within ten days.
On Saturday the union leaders met Chief Minister Siddaramaiah who assured to settle their issues at the earliest. It can also be brought to notice that the disgusted employees even had submitted letter to the Deputy Commissioner requesting him to permit them euthanasia.
The employees and their family members said that company owners are cheating employees by not resuming works and not giving them salary for the past three years. Though meetings have been held at Vidhana Soudha, it didn’t yield results. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah did take initiative and directed industry minister Deshpande to solve the problems, but there has been no progress. The union leaders requested Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to immediately convene high level meeting to pressurize Falcon Tyre chairman and Managing director Pavan Kumar Ruia to resume production.
Shivanne Gowda, Secretary of Falcon Employees Union requested the government and management to provide them interim relief till the issues are solved so that the families which are almost on street can relax. “Most of the families facing lot of hardship and most of them have pledge all their valuables and are left with nothing; if government and management failed to intervene then definitely most of the employees will be left with no other option but to take extreme step including committing suicide.he states that two employees have already ended life.
He further said that Falcon Tyre company falls under Chamundeshwari constituency where Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is expected to contest in the forthcoming assembly election.
It can be brought to light that the members of Falcon Tyres Employees Union staged 141 days indefinite protest near Deputy Commissioner’s office. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, the then Revenue Minister Srinivas Prasad, Industry Minister RV Deshpande and other elected representatives interfered and managed to convince factory chairman Pawan Kumar Ruia who assured to resume operations but Pawan couldn’t keep up his words as the factory is out of gear with no workers from management side and basic infrastructural facilities for the employees. It was in 1975 that the factory was established. There were nearly 2400 employees who were working in three shifts. Every month on an average the factory used to manufacture 10 lakh Dunlop tyres and nearly 5.10 lakh tubes. The yearly turnover of the factory was estimated around Rs 1200 crore.
