3 min readAhmedabadFeb 5, 2009 02:40 AM IST
First published on: Feb 5, 2009 at 02:40 AM IST
The ‘restructuring exercise’ following the financial crunch has affected most of the major retail chains in Gujarat,including Spencer’s,Mega Store,Big Bazaar and recently Subhiksha,which have shut their stores.
Subhiksha shut down 130 stores last month in Gujarat alone,rendering nearly 15,000 employees jobless.
The jobless employees have alleged that the company neither paid them salaries for four months nor deposited the provident fund amount of three years to their bank accounts.
During a recent demonstration,they slammed the company’s managing director R Subramanium for his ‘claims’ of generating a profit of Rs 22 crore and the company’s ‘plan’ to invest Rs 350 crore in July 2009.
The employees were reportedly forced to sign on a paper that declared them going on ‘leave without pay’ from December 1 2008 to May 31,2009.
Palak Shah,an ex-employee,said: “We were forced to sign this and given one month’s salary cheque. When we opposed the move,we were told that if we don’t sign it,we would not even get that one month’s salary. The cheque that was given to us has bounced three times. Later,we came to know the company had not deposited the provident fund money for three years.”
Shrikant S,the Assistant Vice-President of Subhiksha,who had handed over the letters to the employees,said,”I don’t want to comment on anything. We are waiting for the orders to come from our seniors and only then we can comment on this.”
The RPG Group,which owns the Spencer’s Retail,had quit its operations in Ahmedabad at six different locations following the meltdown in November. The stores in Vadodara had announced to shut nearly 56 stores across the country.
Similarly,employees of India Bulls had undergone this when the Pyramid Store — a lifestyle mega store on the C G Road — was shut down in September last year.
“They were not paid the due salaries and the store had shut down immediately,” said a former employee of Pyramid. The Piramal Group had been handling the Pyramid Store before it was taken over by India Bulls in January 2008.
Future Group’s Big Bazaar pulled down the shutters of its two units at Shayamal Cross Roads and Bapunagar in September last year.
Sources in the retail market have confirmed that some Reliance Fresh outlets in Gujarat might face closure shortly. The company,however,has been denying of facing any cash crunch.
“There are over 700 stores across the state and if ‘some’ are facing the threat of shutting down in some cities,we would not like to give store-based information,” said an official from NEUCOM,Mumbai,the consulting company of the Reliance Industries.
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