June 29: Employees of Prag Bosimi Synthetics Ltd, in Darrang district, have turned to Dispur for help with their company having almost shut the door on them.

The polyester yarn product industry, the biggest in the Northeast, stopped production in November last year and the employees have not received salaries since February this year.

The 500 employees of the unit have urged the state government to intervene so that production can be started at the earliest and their dues released immediately.

The PBSL was set up at Bijulibari under Sipajhar revenue circle in 1985 by the then state government to solve the problem of unemployment. However, mismanagement pu-shed the unit towards immine-nt closure. The management stopped production last year, citing huge financial losses.

In a letter addressed to the employees, PBSL managing director Hemanta Byas stated that the plant had been incurring losses since the increase in prices of raw materials and fuel. He also blamed non-release of huge amounts of government subsidies for the crisis. Byas said he had personally put in a lot of effort to end the crisis with the help of the government.

The employees, however, expressed dissatisfaction over the management?s attitude. After several rounds of talks with the management, they remain as unconvinced as ever.

?The management has been playing with our lives by giving us false assurance,? one of the employees said. ?Five months have passed since the promises were made by the management. But nothing positive has emerged so far,? he added.

Darrang deputy commissioner Sailendra Kumar Nath, who visited the unit on June 25, directed the management to pay the employees their salaries and restart production soon.

President of the PBSL Employees Union, J. Nath, and its secretary, D. Sarma, hoped that the government would take initiatives to find a solution to their problems.