Kushtia: Abject poverty forced Aduri Bewa to beg for two meals. At the start, she felt ashamed, but there’s nothing doing. How many days could she survive without food?
The once-well-off housewife never imagined of panhandling for bred, but she couldn’t help since her husband lost his job with the closing down of the century-old Mohini Mills in 1990.
The jobless husband died few days later, suffering a lot for lack of treatment. And the widow of three children had to leave the mill quarter, empty-handed. They had also nowhere to go.
Since then, Aduri has dreamt that someday the textile mill would start again and her elder son would get a job to put an end to the agonies of penury. In course of time, the sexagenarian woman has been relegated to a street-beggar
Every cloud has a silver lining—and Aduri’s dream should come true now, with Mohini’s resurrection.
The famous textile mill made a new start on Friday morning, with a changed nomenclature after Muslim saint Shah Makhdum.
Deputy Commissioner Abdul Mannan officially inaugurated operations of Shah Makhdum Textile Mills at 11am. The wheels of BSBR unit of the industrial unit started rolling again with a workforce of over 450 workers.
Mohini Mohan Chakraborty had established the mills in 1908. The then Pakistan government in 1965 had put the mill on the list of enemy property (now called vested property) and laid its ownership under the EPIDC.
The mill was nationalized in 1972, after Bangladesh’s liberation from the repressive Pakistani rule. But it was shut down in the 1977-78 fiscal year on the excuse of the mill incurring a heavy loss.
After a long break, the mill started production in July 1989 under private ownership, but again shut down in May 1990 due to internal conflicts among the members of the Board of Directors.
Awami League joint general secretary Mahbub-Ul-Alam Hanif initiated a move for the reopening of the mill once the present Grand Alliance government assumed power with the slogan of ‘change’.
BDST 1411 HRS, May 21, 2010
Corr/BK/AHS/LY/MUA
