KAKINADA/YANAM: The future of about 1,200 workers (contract and regular) of Regency Ceramics Limited (RCL) appears to be bleak as the factory, which is one of the biggest in the area, is unlikely to reopen in the foreseeable future.Company chairman and managing director GN Naidu on Saturday sounded sceptical and said he was not confident of bringing the Rs 700-crore factory and ancillary units “back into shape''. He suspected political motives behind the attack on the factory.The chairman condemned the killing of company’s president (operations)K C Chandrasekhar by workers and said his company provided employment to about 1,200 workers directly and to another 3,000 persons indirectly. “But the workers killed Chandrasekhar who played a vital role in the development of the factory and welfare of the workers. We invested around Rs 700 in the factory and educational institutions. Now, only ash remains at the factory,” he said.Suspecting the involvement of outsiders in the violence, he demanded a CBI probe into the incident.The factory has been burning since Friday following the attack of contract workers who have been on strike for the past few weeks, but no authority has bothered to extinguish it. Regency Ceramics Limited, the largest exporter of ceramic tiles in India, was set up at Yanam in the Union Territory of Puduchery by GN Naidu in the 1980s and has an annual turnover about `206 crore. Around 1,200 employees are working in it with a majority of them hailing from East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh and around 30 per cent being natives. S Ganapati, an employee, fears loss of livelihood if the management fails to restore RCL's operations. He said Chandrasekhar strove for the welfare of the workers and assured to take an initiative to make the management declare bonus besides a wage hike though the company had not made profits. “But the irate workers killed him brutally, leaving the other employees to their fate. I suspect they must have attacked him holding responsible for the delay in resolving the issue,” he felt.Most of the regular workers and contract workers, who signed the agreement with the management on production-based incentives, claim that the contract workers who went on the rampage did not bother about the lives of their co-workers. Some workers, however, blamed the management saying that it was harassing them on every small issue including formation of a workers union but was not ready to declare a wage hike or bonus even though workers were working with dedication and commitment. “We are paid a paltry Rs 6,000 a month even after 15 years of experience. How can one live off such meagre salaries? They have been exploiting us and it is the management's responsibility to ensure that we do not lose our livelihood,” said S Rajkumar, another worker.
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