CHENNAI/COIMBATORE : Tasmac employees across Tamil Nadu continued their protest for the second day on Monday shutting down liquor outlets in opposition to the introduction of the environmental and social welfare cess, under which Rs 10 would be collected from consumers for every bottle. The money would be refunded when they return the empty bottle under the bottle buyback scheme.
Prohibition and Excise Minister K Vignesh told reporters in Coimbatore that more than 960 Tasmac employees had been served show-cause notices for taking part in the protest and four employees were suspended for allegedly preventing the opening of outlets.
Alternative staff would be deployed to run the outlets, the minister said. About 460 of the state’s 4,040 outlets — roughly 10% — remained closed on Monday. Unions said the stir would continue as the government had not held talks with the protesting staff.
Most liquor outlets remained closed in several parts of Chennai on Monday, and customers who turned up to buy liquor waited for a long time before returning disappointed. Outlets in a few areas such as Pallikaranai and Velachery remained open and drew heavy crowds. In several places, stocks ran out within three hours of opening, forcing the outlets to shut again.
The empty-bottle return scheme is being implemented on the directions of the Madras High Court, which had earlier this year set May 31 as the deadline for its full rollout and warned that it would otherwise direct Tasmac to collect an environmental compensation fee of Rs 10 per bottle sold.
The employees, however, claim that outlets do not have enough space to store returned bottles and have demanded that the collection be outsourced or that automatic collection machines be installed at all outlets.
Vignesh said around 40 crore liquor bottles were sold every month in Tamil Nadu, which took annual sales to 480 crore bottles and put the amount involved in the deposit system at around Rs 4,800 crore a year.
Alleging serious irregularities in the collection and refund of deposits on empty bottles, he said the revised system would ensure transparency. The government plans to install 4,048 reverse vending machines and consumers can return empty bottles anywhere across the state.
“Digital billing will also be introduced, with every bottle being scanned before sale. Online payments have been introduced for transactions above Rs 1,000, and the threshold will subsequently be extended to transactions exceeding Rs 500,” he said.
While not ruling out privatisation of liquor retail operations, the minister said that a decision would be taken only after assessing the advantages and disadvantages.
Handing over retail operations to private players could lead to monopolies, syndicates manipulating prices during tenders and illegal liquor sales, he said and said that the circumstances that led former CM J Jayalalithaa to take over private outlets in 2003 would also have to be considered.
