Manpower crunch hits Bharuch units

TNN | May 6, 2020, 04:18 IST

Surat/Bharuch: If the industries located at Dahej, Vilayat, Ankleshwar, Panoli, Jhagadia and Palej GIDC estates of Bharuch had any hope of being up and running within the next few days, it has been dashed.
They were granted permission by the authorities concerned to start production activities from April 25, but absence of workers put paid to resumption of full-fledged operation.
The district administration has granted permission to more than 3,500 industries to start production. But it had also limited workforce to 33 per cent. You can’t scale up production capacity without having 75 per cent workforce in big projects, Dahej Industries Association secretary Sunil Bhatt said.
Vilayat Industries Association vice-president Ashish Garg said, "Industries in operation and those under construction both are badly affected due to migration of workers to their hometowns from the district. Severe manpower crisis is very much visible here.
Construction and commissioning activities of over 50 projects with investment of more than Rs5,000 crores in Bharuch are affected by the absence of workers. State government should do something about this.”
Industries associations of Dahej, Vilayat, and Saykha have jointly sent a detailed representation to principal secretary, industries and mines department of the state government seeking support.
“We have requested the government to not increase water or drainage cess charges and that it invest money for now on desalination plants and common effluent treatment plants. It can recover the cost later from the industries because currently they are facing a liquidity crunch,” Vilayat GIDC Industries Association president Mahesh Vashi said.
Several projects are unable to start their activities due to lack of infrastructure. A common effluent treatment plant and water distribution pipeline at Saykha estate were commissioned recently and hence could not be utilized, Saykha Industries Association president Chandresh Devani said.