No show: Cops chill off in front of a closed hall

Tollywood is facing turnaround time with a string of hits in recent years, but the housefull board is giving a miss to the gates of two prominent cinema halls in Hatibagan.

Thanks to a stand-off between the owner and the employees’ union, Sree and Uttara are lying closed for the past six years.

The closed shutters have wiped out not only the gate collections for the owners, but also the monthly salaries for 65 employees engaged in the two halls. The picture has remained unchanged since 1998 when, faced with an adamant trade union, the owner, Dilip Kankaria, was forced to close down the halls.

The dispute revolves around 17 employees who were taken on in 1998 without Kankaria’s approval. Moreover, it placed a demand for a 20 per cent bonus for the staff, which was unacceptable to the loss-ridden management.

“For two years, I was very unwell and had appointed a person to run the affairs of the halls on my behalf,” Kankaria told Metro, adding that it was this person who had made the appointments.

“I had to spend Rs 2 lakh every month only in salaries but my income from the two halls was less than Rs 2 lakh.” The owner also had to pick up the bill for running the air-conditioning machines, pay taxes to the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) and bear other operating costs.

“It was becoming difficult for me to run the halls. I requested the union to allow me to retrench the 17 employees whom they had appointed. But the leaders put their foot down. I had no option but to close down the halls,” said the man whose family is running Sree and Uttara since 1936.

The talks are on but to no avail. While Kankaria complains that the union representatives are “not ready to listen to me,” he has refused to reopen the halls unless the 17 names were struck off the service book.

This has created an impasse to which no end seems to be in sight. Said Swadhin Alok Mukherjee, general secretary of Bengal Motion Pictures Employees Union (BMPEU): “We have written to the chief minister’s secretariat requesting it to act promptly to save the families of hall employees. We expect that the secretariat will soon take up the issue with the owner and the employees union.”

Though the Citu-controlled hall union is flexing muscles, the upper echelons of the ruling CPM’s labour arm seem neither aware nor bothered. Mrinal Das, Citu’s state secretariat member who looks after the unorganised sector, said he had no idea about the closure of the halls.

Raghunath Kushari, Citu’s pointsman for the city cinema halls, admitted that the two halls were closed for years due to labour dispute spearheaded by the Citu. “But I cannot say right now whether the owner or the state government are making any attempts to reopen the halls. I have to talk to our local units to get the complete picture,” Kushari said.

The 65 employees now have only “do-it-now” chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to turn to.