Around 1100 employees of Hindustan Antibiotics, Pimpri, which was started in 1955 at the initiative of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, have decided not to vote in Maharashtra assembly elections as they have been denied their salaries for the past 10 months. The employees have decided to protest in front of candidates and leaders who come to seek votes.
The employees, who have launched a “Save HA campaign” said they have been hard-pressed for survival as the company is struggling to pay their salaries. “The production has come to a standstill. The company has no working capital. The central government is not releasing the Rs 500 crore revival package. Nobody is taking up for case seriously,” said Sunil Pataskar, general secretary of the Hindustan Mazdoor Sangh. “In view of the complete apathy of the central government, Ministry of Chemical and Fertilisers and leaders of various political parties, we have decided to not vote in this assembly elections in a bid to draw attention to our plight,” Pataskar said, adding that the employees along with their families number 5000 and are spread in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad. “The question is why should we vote ? Should we vote because we are not been paid salaries ? Should we vote because the company has been left to die ?,” he asked.
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When contacted, HA personnel manager T Das conceded that the company has struggled to pay salaries to the employees as it has no funds to do so. “We do not have even have the working capital. Our dues like PF, sales tax and income tax have gone beyond Rs 100 crore,” he said. Sources in the company said Rs 8 crore which were recently received for upgradation of machinery was used for paying the pending salaries of the employees. “Whenenever some amount has been received for the upgradation of projects, the company has used the amount to pay to the employees whose families would otherwise have to beg for survival,” company sources said.
Pataskar said the HA Mazdoor Sangh has met Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitely who has promised to do something” to revive the company. “We hope something will be done quickly, otherwise the company will have to shut down leaving 1,100 in jeopardy,” he said.
Hindustan Antibiotics Ltd, Pimpri, was the first penicillin unit set up in the country at the insistence of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. The foundation stone for Hindustan Antibiotics, which finds a mention in school textbooks in Maharashtra as the country’s first penicillin factory, was laid by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1956.
The newly-elected Shiv Sena MP Shrirang Barne heads the Mazdoor Sangh. Earlier, Supriya Sule was heading the Sangh and before her, Sharad Pawar was the president.
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
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