The Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation continues to be mired in losses due to the huge payroll burden of its 25 closed factories since 2020.

Between 2021 and 2023, the state-owned enterprise paid a total of Tk 422.18 crore to 2,517 employees. Subsequently, its losses amounted to Tk 843.15 crore during the period.

Due to heavy losses each year, the government on July 2, 2020 closed down the 25 jute mills and sent about 25,000 workers into voluntary retirement through a golden handshake amounting to Tk 5,000 crore.

However, 2,517 are still employed, and BJMC spends about Tk 3.56 crore every month on their salaries, according to officials.

BJMC Chairman Farooq Ahmed declined to comment on the losses incurred in the past three years.

But Abdur Rauf, secretary of the ministry of textiles and jute, said the employees are needed to protect the huge estate of BJMC, which encompasses 1,300 acres around the country.

"If the government employees were terminated from their jobs, these lands could be grabbed," he said, justifying the decision to retain the officials.

Retaining the officials would result in a "loss of hundreds of crores of taka" for a few years but it would protect a huge government asset.

"Protecting the estate is important," Rauf added.

In the closed Latif Bawany Jute Mills in Demra of Dhaka, 75 officers and 97 employees are still employed. They pass their time doing paperwork as per the instructions of the BJMC, according to officials of the jute mill who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Over in Khulna, the nine closed jute mills in the region have nine production officers still on the BJMC payroll as well as purchase, quality control, marketing and factory supervision officers.

More than 1,000 officers and employees are engaged in the upkeep of the jute mills in Khulna, where the government is spending Tk 1.8 crore every month on their salaries.

In the last two months, 82 Ansar members were struck off the payroll, said Golam Rabbani, the regional director of BJMC in Khulna.

The rest of the officials and employees, who are engaged in leasing out the jute mills to the private sector, are still on the payroll, he added.

The lease agreements of 14 jute mills have been completed, said Md. Nasimul Islam, general manager of admin & CS) of BJMC, adding that six jute mills that were handed over are in production.

"The longer the government-owned jute mills stay shut, the higher the losses the BJMC would incur in their upkeep," said Mahmudul Huq, former deputy managing director of Janata Jute Mills, one of the profitable private sector jute mills.

Valuable machinery parts could be siphoned off and sold if the factories remain shut for an extended period, he said.

"It is inevitable," said the jute industry veteran.

Subsequently, he suggested converting the land of some of the bigger mills, especially those that are in Dhaka, Khulna and Chattogram, into special economic zones.

"They could be used for any industrial purpose just like the Adamjee SEZ, which is a very successful model of regeneration of industrial land," he added.

Augmenting the capacity of the closed mills will increase the overall production capacity of the jute sector.

"That will only result in lower prices for the jute goods, in both the export and local market -- much to the overall detriment of the sector," Huq added.