Rumours are also there that state-owned Jessore Jute Industries and Carpeting Jute mills may also be laid off on the pretext of power outage and dull market of jute products both at home and abroad.

Leaders of Khulna regional unit of Patkal Sangram Parishad (PSP) held a closed-door meeting at a local hotel on Saturday midnight where they hit upon a plan to go for a severe agitation in consultation with CBA leaders of all jute mills in Dhaka and Chittagong.

The meeting was attended by CBA leaders of eight jute mills in Khulna-Jessore industrial belt.

Earlier on June 4, some 1080 workers of five state-owned jute mills in Khulna industrial belt were served with termination notices.

Authorities of laid-off Crescent, Star and Platinum Jubilee Jute mills held a meeting with the CBA leaders yesterday in the zonal office of BJMC in a bid to end the impasse.

The CBA leaders made it very clear to the authorities that workers would not join works until mills are reopened fully withdrawing lay-off orders and making full payment of all arrears.

They also refused to ask workers to joint works in the sacking section of Star, Crescent and Platinum Jubilee Jute mills.

PSP Convener Sarder Motaharuddin said all jute mills in Khulna- Jessore industrial belt have become losing concerns due to wrong policy of past government, unbridled corruption, financial crisis and power outages.

He said the mills are now virtually on the verge of collapse as the caretaker government has not allocated any fund in the recently-announced national budget for running them properly.

A source at Zonal BJMC office told this correspondent that the government is reluctant to allocate any more fund to reopen the jute mills.

"We are trying to devise ways and means to run the mills on 'No work no wages basis' lessening production cost," said the source.

Zonal Coordinator of BJMC Shamim Ahmed said time is running out fast to resolve the crisis.