V NarayanaMurthi THE Olympic Games to be held this August in China appears to be playing a cruel game on the lives of thousands of people of Gudiyattam, near Vellore, who are engaged in handmade and mechanised match factories. The banning of export of phosphorus by the Chinese Government in an effort to have a green Olympics has increased the cost of this key raw material. China is the major supplier of phosphorus to many countries including India. Over 250 match units of Gudiyattam will strike work for two days on June 23 and 24, demanding the intervention of the government to control the prices of the raw material. According to vice president, All India Match Producers Association, V G Dhanapal, the prices of phosphorus, sulphur, wax, cardboard matchsticks and other essential items required for the production have gone up by at least five times in the past one year. The price of phosphorus has soared from Rs 280 per kg to Rs 800 while sulphur, which was priced around Rs 350 for 50 kg last year has increased to Rs 2,800 now. The price of a kilogram of wax has increased from Rs 25 a kg to Rs 60. The sad part is that the match units at Gudiyattam were silently bearing the brunt and had not hiked the selling price of match boxes, which had remained constant for the past 20 years or so. Many of the units are barely sustaining by cushioning the price hike and continue to produce around 2.5 lakh bundles of match es (each bundle contains around 600 boxes) a month. Out of the 500 plus units in Gudiyattam, half have closed down since they were not able to continue incurring losses, Dhanapal said. "This cannot go on for ever," he noted. The industry employs around 60,000 workers both directly and indirectly, mostly women, and every attempt has been made to protect them, he added. The two-day protest is to draw the attention of the Central Government as well as the State Govern ments to take measures to bring down the prices of the raw materials besides devising plans to safeguard the interest of the factories in the business. Alternative arrangements to import phosphorus from other countries like Japan and Indonesia, until China resumes exports, subsidising the prices of wax, plantation of the match stick trees on a mass scale, extending tax concessions by the state and central government are some of the demands by the match units.