On May 2, Minister for Scheduled Tribes Development K Radhakrishnan inaugurated an adalat — ‘Karuthal-Kaithangu’ (Care and Helping Hand) — and threatened to dismiss government officials who ‘pick-pocket’ from common people. He stated, ‘Keeping people waiting by ignoring their complaints for a long time is a crime.’ However, the minister’s speech didn’t address the grievances of Aralam Farming Corporation workers, who have been protesting for 36 days for their unpaid salaries and wages. The company, under Radhakrishnan’s administrative control, hasn’t paid its 380 casual and regular workers for the past six months.
P K Ramachandran, a security guard of Aralam Farm and secretary of the CPM’s Aralam Local Committee, stated that of the 380 workers, 274 belong to Scheduled Tribes and all of them have been pushed into poverty. Workers affiliated with all political parties are part of the protest, but the company has ignored them. On May 2, the day of the adalat, Kannur collector S Chandrasekhar, who is also the chairman of Aralam Farming Corporation, called the protesters for talks at the Collectorate, but only urged them not to picket farm offices from May 3. Since there was no response from the government and the corporation, the workers started picketing the agriculture offices in the seven blocks of Aralam Farm.
The director of Scheduled Tribes Development Department, Vinay Goyal, who is also a director of Aralam Farming Corporation, was not available for comment when contacted by Onmanorama. The Joint Director in charge P Vanidas said the directorate could do little without the government taking a decision. On April 11, eight days after the protest began at Aralam Farm, the workers met Minister Radhakrishnan and submitted a petition. ‘He said he would take up the matter but after a month; he did not even call us for talks. neither has he taken steps to disburse our salaries and wages,’ said a protester.
Aralam Farm, spread over 3,500 acres, was once one of the biggest coconut producers in Kerala, generating an operational cost of Rs 12 crore every year, including Rs 8.4 crore to pay wages. Today, it is sinking in debt, after being relentlessly raided by elephants and monkeys since 2017, and mismanaged by bureaucrats, as per the workers. The farm is generating only Rs 10 lakh in a year, mostly from the rubber and nursery. The company is sinking in debt but that didn’t stop the bureaucrats from starting a cow farm and a goat farm at Aralam. The cow farm, with an operational cost of Rs 1 lakh every month, sells only Rs 30,000 worth of milk. The goat farm started with 50 goats and now has around 100 goats because there are no buyers, and the feed and wage cost per month for the goat farm comes to Rs 25,000. CITU leader Ramachandran stated that the company will need to raise at least Rs 6 crore immediately to settle the wage bills and other debt.
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