Vishal Mega Mart Aurangabad store on verge of closure

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Mahesh Joshi

11 February, 2010

Though the company cited the reason as landlord - management dispute for over three months pending rental, relevant sources claims it as a step towards permanent closure of store.

THE THREE and half year old Vishal Mega Mart retail store in Aurangabad operations is most likely to be closed as the company has not opened the store from February 2,2010. Though the company cited the reason as landlord - management dispute for over three months pending rental, relevant sources claims it as a step towards permanent closure of store.

The Aurangabad Vishal Mega Mart has 76 employees who were shocked with the management directions not to enter the store on February 2. Since then, all employees are daily attending duty with hopes that the store will open again, but after spending 8 hours outside the premises, there is nobody to answer their queries.

The Vishal Mega Mart Aurangabad Manager, Santosh Dixit, maintained that the store is closed due to the 3 months pending rental. But at the same time huge losses is another reason for the closure. The Aurangabad store is running with losses amounting Rs.6 lakhs a month for last one year. To reduce it we adopted some cost cutting measures that included closure of one out of total three floors in October 2009. This helped us to bring rentals down by about Rs. 2 Lakhs a month. But still we did not succeed in recovering from the losses, said Dixit.

However, company has sympathy for their employees and the management will take care of them, he added. A senior management person told on condition of anonymity that the company is in loss of Rs. 700 crores across the nation. The management has decided to close the stores that are contributing hugely to the losses. The Aurangabad, Nashik and Indore are amongst the cities where the company is all set to stop operations. The landlord of Aurangabad store Narendra Agarwal told, he is in favour that the store should run forever.

"I have not at all pressurized them for rentals, but as three months rent were pending, I asked them on February 1 to either pay it or close the store", he added.

The two-storied Aurangabad Vishal Mega Mart store is spread at 16 thousand sq. ft. area with rental of about Rs.3 Lakh per month. Initially the store had about 180 employees that came down to 76 in 3.5 years. The mega mart has the Shiv Sena sponsored Bhartiya Kamgar Sena (BKS) workers union here.

The BKS unit chief Krishna Pataswane told, closure of shop for indefinite period shocked us. About 500 family members are dependent on the store. Its closure means crisis for these people. The BKS has always supported the management and we even did not demand increment due to the weak financial condition. Even in the crisis period the daily collection of store was more than Rs. 80 thousand, about 20-25 thousand less the previous days. Despite good response if management decides to shut down, he said would lead to an agitation for the rights of workers.

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COMMENTS (1)

maddy

.no the mall will open as soon as the disput will gets close.the futher is very bright of vishal mega mart