HYDERABAD, Aug 26: Sindh Taraqqi Pasand Party (STPP) chairman Dr Qadir Magsi has said his party and people of Shahdadkot will resist the privatization of the Shahdadkot Textile Mills.

Talking to a delegation of Shahdadkot workers which called on him at Taraqqi Pasand House here on Monday, he said the party would launch a resistance movement if the decision to dispose of the mill was not withdrawn.

Dr Magsi, who is also the president of the Pakistan Oppressed Nations Movement, Sindh chapter, said the sale of the mill at a throw-away price was an anti-workers step and would not be tolerated.

The members of the delegation, Manzoor Ahmad Soomro, Ayaz Ansari, Syed Mohammad Shah and Mohammad Mithal told Dr Magsi that 778 workers were employed in the mill on permanent basis who had not received their salaries for the last 27 months.

They alleged that the chairman of the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation was trying to dispose of the mill as a junk to get millions of rupees as commission.

Dr Magsi said the anti-Sindh bureaucratic lobby and capitalists were trying to destroy the industrial sector in Sindh and shift the industrial units to Punjab under a planned conspiracy.

He said the unemployment in Sindh could be eliminated by setting up more industrial units in the province but, he added, the anti-Sindh rulers and bureaucrats were trying to close even the existing units.

He said the result was that 60 per cent of people of the province were living below the poverty line.

The STPP leader demanded a detailed inquiry as to how a profitable textile mill had gone into deficit.

He further demanded that the decision to dispose of the mill should be withdrawn and the workers should be paid their salaries of 27 months.