Future Group’S MSME vendors along with one lakh workers are in jeopardy as the vendors have not yet received their payment for the last three years. These vendors have claimed that even Reliance Retail has not lifted goods worth Rs. 500 crore for around eight months in spite of mutual understanding between Reliance Retail, Future Group and vendors. There was no clear assurance from Future Group during vendor’s agitation held on 11th November at their Head Office.
This was said in a statement by Future Group Vendors United (FGVU), an association of more than 300 MSME vendors supplying garment and fashion accessories to all Future Group companies namely Future Enterprises Ltd, Future Retail Ltd, Future Lifestyle Fashions Ltd ,Future Speciality Retail Ltd.
Piyush Shah, Co-Founder & Member GGUV stated that there was a gathering of more than 100 vendors at Future Group’s head office in Jogeshwari to meet Kishore Biyani on 7th November, and he called these vendors for a meeting on 11th November. However, no clear reply or solution was given by him during the meet.
So the vendors from across the city and states like Tirupur, Delhi, Gujarat, Rajasthan have been camping in Mumbai and decided to gather outside Reliance Retail head office to get their plea heard about the lifting of the ready inventory.
These vendors are keen for recovery of their outstanding in all Future Group companies pending since over three years. And secondly, the goods which they had made under the tripartite arrangement between Future Enterprises Ltd / Reliance Retail Ltd / Vendors have been lying with them since last eight months.
The statement also adds that a mutual arrangement was arrived at earlier wherein the vendors used to bill goods to Future Enterprises Ltd and ship to Reliance Retail Ltd and payments for the same were done by Reliance Retail Ltd directly to the vendors.
“We have approached all the institutions, associations, MSMEs and other government bodies to support the industry or else thousands of vendors who are MSMEs and who employ more than one lakh workers will be out of business and won’t survive this delay in payments and ready goods deliveries. The whole industry will see drastic effects of unimagined magnitude and crisis for a long time if the issue of these MSMEs is not resolved,” the statement claimed.
