The historic state-owned Muslin Cotton Mills, the largest cotton mill
in Asia, is going to be reopened after 23 years under a private
ownership.
Jute and Textiles Minister Abdul Latif Siddiqui transferred the
ownership documents of the mill to Reefat Garments, a sister concern
of Hameem Group, on Saturday. It was sold at Tk 135 crore.
State Minister for Women and Children Affairs Meher Afroz Chumki and
Hameem Group Chairman AK Azad and local MP were also present on the
occasion.
The Muslin Cotton Mills is expected to generate employment
opportunities for 25,000 people and make the upazila economically
vibrant.
Set up on 100 acres of land on the bank of Shitalakhya River in
Kaliganj in 1952, the mill once had three sections – spinning, looming
and dyeing.
There were about 48,000 spindles in the spinning section, 496 looms in
looming section and a large dyeing section. It had a total of 2800
workers, over 300 officers and employees when the mill took off in
1952.
In 1968, Gol Box Bhuiyan, a jute trader of Rupganj, bought the mill at
Tk 80 lakh with support from the then East Pakistan Industrial
Development Corporation. And the Bangladesh government in 1982 took
control over the mills by taking 51 percent of its shares.
The authorities shut the mill on July 4, 1990 for its failure to pay
wages and salaries to its 2,885 workers amid serious mismanagement.
Later, in 1991, the then BNP government reopened it for a while but
had to close it due to its staggering losses.
In 1996, the mill was handed to the authorities of Sena Kalyan Trust
but the trust failed to reopen it due to alleged noncooperation of the
Bangladesh Textile Mills Corporation (BTMC).
Later, on April 2004, the BTMC took over the mill.
According to its former labour leaders, the workers were not paid when
the historic mill was closed down in 1990 even though various items
like clothes, cottons, fabrics and thread worth Tk 40 crore were there
in its storehouse apart from machinery worth over Tk 20 crore.
Muslin is a loosely woven cotton fabric, which is produced from carded
cotton yarn. Before its closure, the mill used to make fabrics and
yarn out of cotton. -UNB, Gazipur
