Mysuru Asian Paints stops operations as farmers continue protest seeking jobs

Mysuru: The ongoing protests by farmers against the Asian Paints factory in Mysuru has brought the operations of the company to a halt. The farmers who gave away their farmlands for the factory are still waiting for promised jobs. The protest entered 50th day on Wednesday.

In a meeting held recently where Industries Minister Jagadish Shettar was also present the company promised a resolution shortly. However, with no positive development, the farmers announced that they would intensify the protests.

On its part, the company, in a statement, said that it acted in line with the terms of conditions agreed upon with the government of Karnataka.

"As per the land lease agreement signed by Asian Paints with the Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board (KIADB), and other terms & conditions mutually agreed with the land sellers, the company had offered jobs to all the eligible land sellers within the Mysuru region in a facility specifically set up to offer on-roll jobs to the land sellers.

This has been done with an additional investment of Rs. 14 crore for the health & hygiene business of the company. The company has gone an extra mile, so that the organization honours all the commitments made to the government and also contributes to the prosperity and progress of the region. The additional facility has been created specially to give on-roll permanent employment to all the land sellers since the existing paint facility is highly automated and given the qualification of the land sellers, they cannot work in the paint plant where there are automated systems which require qualified engineers. The land sellers have been trained and paid stipend during their training period from June 2019 to August 2020.

The situation has changed suddenly in the last 4-6 weeks, wherein land sellers are not ready to take the on-roll permanent jobs at the new facility especially built at an additional cost of Rs 14 crore in alignment with the government authorities. It is highly unfortunate that despite the company going out of the way to offer permanent jobs to land sellers, the gates of the Mysuru paint plant are blocked and demonstrations being held despite an injunction order from the Hon'ble Court. This has led to a shutdown of the Mysuru paint facility for the last 2-3 days resulting in business loss.

This shutdown of the plant and the current situation is not good for industries to put more investment in the region since it creates uncertainty on continuity and ease of doing business," the company's statement read.