Textile mill on verge of collapse in Western Region

Butwal, July 4 (RSS):J. B. Mills, the largest textile mill in the Western Development Region is on the verge of collapse.

The sorry state of the textile mill is attributed to people’s insensible attitude towards the use of indigenous textile and poor implementation of the acts and regulations formulated so far for the betterment of such industries.

At present, the production of the mills lies somewhere between 25,000 to 30,000 metre of textile against its full capacity of 100,000 metre a year, whereas, dyeing confines to only 150,000 metre of textiles against its full capacity of 300,000 metre.

Due to closure of spinning machinery which costs about Rs. 5 million, the factory incurs a loss of about Rs. 300,000 a month, according to the mill management.

The rise in electricity tariff from time to time within a short span of time and its irregular supply has decreases its production, on the one hand, while the factory has no way out but to pay wages to the labourers for full time.

According to Managing Director of the factory Ajit Kumar Pradhan, the mills has been compelled to operate one shift a day due to failure to realise dues of the textiles it had despatched to mountainous regions from its sale depots at Butwal, Nepalgunj and Kathmandu.

The textile mill established at a cost of Rs. 60 million in 2042 B.S. possesses a 112-power looms, dyeing, finishing, printing and spinning plants.

It is said that the mill has to face a tough competition with the textiles imported illegally from India and Tibet Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China.

According to a survey, the consumption of textiles in the country stands at 400 million metre a year. All the textiles other than 30 million metre that is produced annually within the country and about 120 million metre imported into the country after clearing custom duty at the transit points are smuggled into country.

The factory has put up with losses by one or two rupees per metre incurred as a result of the fluctuation in the prices of inputs, managing director Pradhan says.

Lack of budget hits local development works

Birgunj, July 4 (RSS):A number of local development works have been hampered as the majority of village development committees of Parsa district showed disinterest in demanding the quarterly development budget in time.

According to account section of Parsa DDC, a total of Rs. 18,640,695 has so far been released by Parsa DDC after fulfilling all formalities as per development grant directory. His Majesty’s Government has sanctioned Rs. 20.5 million for the VDCs under current fiscal year excluding the grant which accounts for more that 50 per cent.

A sum of rs 1.85 million meant for development budget for the VDCs still remains in the DDC’S account as a result of the failure to demand budget in line with the directory on the part of VDCs.

The district saw sluggishness in development works this year due to the lack of budget for the development works the VDC had to carry out, but the VDCs are now approaching the DDC for release of the budget as per the directory, local development officer Khadga Bahadur Rana said.

Every VDC will be elegible in obtaining budgetory allocations every four months after producing copies of the Village Council’s minutes, details of advance payment, selection of plans and last year’s audit report.

The VDCs which have not yet received development grant assistance number 41.