Khulna: The employees of seven state-owned jute mills in the district went for continuing their indefinite strike on Wednesday defying the government’s call to withdraw it by the day.

Textile and Jute Minister M Emajuddin Pramanik made the call at a meeting with the leaders of the CBAs and non-CBAs of the state-owned jute mill workers at the Secretariat on Tuesday.

Although the government allocated Tk1,000 crore for clearing some of their arrears, workers of the seven state-owned jute mills on Monday announced to continue their strike.

The CBA and non-CBA Oikya Parishad of the seven jute mills - Crescent Jute Mills, Platinum Jute Mills, Khalispur Jute Mills, Star Jute Mills, Eastern Jute Mills, Jessore Jute Mills and Carpeting Jute Mills - enforced the strike on 4 April.

Besides enforcing the strike at the jute mills from 6:00am-2:00pm over the last 10 days, the workers are also staging road and rail blockades.

They withdrew their road and rail blockade programme first on 7 April  giving an ultimatum to the deputy commissioner to take effective steps to meet their demands by Sunday.

On Monday morning, they resumed the road and rail route blockades and declared to continue their strike at the workstations from 6:00am to 6:00pm every day.

The demands of the workers include adequate allocation for the jute industry, payment of their arrears, formation of a wage board and stopping the move to privatise the state-owned jute mills.