Union heavy industries minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who paid a daylong visit to the Panchgram unit, said this today while interacting with the HPC authorities, trade union leaders and reporters.
Deshmukh said the procurement of bamboo for the mill would be the ministry’s prime concern.
He hinted that the ministry would ask the Centre to consider a ban on the export of bamboo to Bangladesh so that the HPC mills in Panchgram and Jagiroad could receive a steady input of raw material.
The plant has fallen on bad days because of a scarcity of raw material.
The Rs 384-crore paper mill at Panchgram produced a record quantity of paper in 2006-07 since its inception in 1984. It then produced 105,000 tonnes of paper as against its annual target of one lakh tonne in a fiscal.
However, the plant faced problems since then because of the scarcity of bamboo after mautam in Mizoram and North Cachar Hills district.
Mautam is the flowering of bamboo that leads to the destruction of trees.
The transport of bamboo to Panchgram and Jagiroad is also a problem.
As a result, the output of bamboo in the Panchgram mill has plummeted by over 30 per cent during the past two fiscals, compelling the mill authorities to order the occasional shutdown of the mill for one or two weeks.
Deshmukh said he asked HPC chairman and managing director Raji Philip to explore the possibility of importing paper pulp from Indonesia and Andhra Pradesh.
The minister had appealed to the HPC top brass to explore the possibility of using materials as firewood, craft paper and waste paper cuttings as an alternative to bamboo.
The Cachar Paper Project Workers’ Union of the Panchgram unit submitted a memorandum to Deshmukh, saying the solution to the problem lay in a change in the current procurement policy which was “ over-centralised and monopolistic”.
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