Chennai: In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, chief minister J. Jayalalithaa has urged the Centre to withdraw the User Fee Notice (explosives).
The Department of Industrial Promotion and Policy, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, issued this on March 20, raising the effective rates steeply.
The explosives storage license fee has been increased from a flat fee of Rs15,000 per year to Rs 4 lakh per year for storage of 2 lakh kg of fireworks while the fee for renewal of foreman (competency) license has increased from Rs 100 to Rs 3,000.
The chief minister also wrote that the Centre should ensure that the customs authorities prevented smuggling of Chinese fireworks into the country when it was Tamil Nadu that supplied more than 80 per cent of the total fireworks sold in the country.
Smuggling of cheaper and unsafe Chinese fireworks has hit the industry, which has been on strike since April 9. This has affected domestic employment and also raised serious safety and environmental issues.
The fireworks industry has, in its representation, expressed its apprehensions about a new post having been created in the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation, Nagpur, to process applications for import and export of explosives and fireworks. It said that the Centre was not only not curbing smuggling, but also acting against the interests of domestic manufacturers of fireworks, who were mostly in Tamil Nadu, in particular, the drought-prone southern districts.
The industry has also argued for a separate set of rules to govern fireworks since explosives rules are too stringent for fireworks.
“This issue requires to be urgently dealt with. I am surprised that the government of India issued such a sensitive, policy order after the date for the announcement of the Parliamentary elections. Not only is this an act bereft of any understanding of the etiquette of parliamentary democracy, it also constitutes a violation of the model code of conduct,” the letter said.
