The strike in the factory will last until the workers are paid three overdue salaries or until the procedure for putting the factory into official receivership is launched.

The hunger-striking women will also end their protest in the Trg Francuske Republike Square outside the privately-owned factory and resume it on the factory's premises.

The hunger strike will be terminated after the workers received promises that the ministry would contact social welfare centres to pay them a one-off allowance and try to organise a meeting with commercial banks to postpone the collection of loan installments from the workers' accounts as they have not received salaries for several months.

The ministry will convene a meeting with the owners, management and supervisory board of Kamensko on Tuesday to ask them why they did not launch the procedure for official receivership and the company's restructuring.

The leader of the trade union of workers in the textile, footwear, leather and rubber industries, Svjetlana Sokcevic, said after today's meeting that she believed that the procedure for putting Kamensko into official receivership would be launched in two or three weeks' time. This procedure will enable the workers of this loss-making factory to receive unemployment benefits and some other claims.

The union leader accused the government of failing to implement anything of what was agreed at a meeting on the textile sector on 30 November 2009. Since then, 5,000 workers in this sector have lost their jobs, Sokcevic said.

The Croatian Independent Trade Unions' Federation (NHS) leader, Kresimir Sever, asked how come the finance ministry had not responded to the fact that the Kamensko management had not been paying contributions for health and pension insurance for months.

He also speculated that the company was being pushed into problems on purpose due to its attractive location in the centre of Zagreb so that after its possible closure a park or a block of flats and offices could be built on that site. Sever called on the Office of the Chief State Prosecutor to investigate the case.