High rate of GST and coal: Brick kiln owners to suspend sales till 17th September
In a big decision taken by the brick kiln owners as part of their ongoing protest against the Central government, they have decided to halt the sale of bricks for six days starting from Monday. The development might lead to crisis for the construction industry and also impact ongoing residential and commercial construction projects in the city. Already there was no fresh production of the bricks because the brick kiln owners had suspended the production of bricks against the increase in GST on their industry recently and high increase in raw material specially coal.
Giving more information about the decision to stop the sale of bricks, Ramesh Mohie, president of Punjab Brick Kiln Association, said “We have been forced to take this step of observing full fledged “Bandh” because the Central government has failed to accept all our demands. From last few years inspite of huge availability of coal from natural sources within India, government has been promoting imported coal which is sold by a few corporates who started exploiting the brick kiln industry by inflating the rate of imported coal from Rs 4,000 per tonne to Rs. 30,000 per tonne. If this was not enough from April 1st, 2022, the government hiked the rate of GST on bricks from 5 per cent from 12 per cent which dealt a deadly blow to us.”
Mohie also said, “The biggest shocker for us was lowering the rate of GST from 18 to 5 per cent on the fly ash bricks which have been declared dangerous by several independent research bodies due to the health hazards they pose. All these developments signal only towards ill intention of the government to destroy the traditional brick manufacturing industry and promote the corporates who are into fly ash brick sales. For months now we have been demanding lowering the GST to 5 percent on bricks and capping the rate of coal for brick kilns, but government is totally silent because of which we already shut down productions at our kilns. Now in order to sharpen our agitation we have decided to suspend the sale of bricks for six days after which we will take decision to take our protest to next level until our demands are met.”
Gagandeep Singh, member of Ludhiana Brick Kiln Association, “We have decided to observe six-day strike from September 12th till September 17th. For these six days not even a single piece of brick will be sold by our kilns as a mark of our protest against non fulfilment of our demands. If Centre does not act now and accept our demands, we will make our agitation bigger than kisan andolan.
