As many manufacturing units in Telangana resume operations, after remaining shut for weeks due to COVID-19- triggered restrictions, factory managements are discovering to their dismay that migrant workers may well hold the key to speedier return to normalcy.
Indeed, the return of the migrant workers to home-towns, be they locations in Telangana or beyond the State boundaries, is going to impact industrial units that employed them. They difference could only be how soon the units started feeling the heat.
It was definitely going to affect, FTCCI president Karunendra S Jasti said, pointing out that the impact of their move was yet to be felt as the industrial units were gradually reopening. The decision of the migrant workers, however, is not just one challenge as the units grapple with many others, including permission to resume with limited employees, only one shift operation, and making necessary arrangements for their transportation from and to the units.
The units grapple with several other problems like non-availability of spare parts of machines, limited or no access to raw materials, and inter-State movement of goods remaining an issue despite Central government issuing guidelines to facilitate their smooth movement.
In industrial units, migrant workers can be classified into tfull-time employees, who put in many years in the facilities and reside with their families in the neighbourhood, and the other category who are single, daily wagers and employed as helpers.
Telangana Industrialists Federation president K.Sudhir Reddy said many of the migrant workers leaving Hyderabad for their native places were employed by the construction industry and in malls, shops, bars, hotels and hospitality sector. Their numbers in manufacturing sector may be relatively less, but enough to cause concern if they do not come back to the jobs after 3-4 months by when the units are also expected to scale up production.
Some solace for the 990 units in Cherllapally, where his plastic manufacturing unit is also located, is a recent survey, he said. The units in the industrial estate there employed 7,000-8,000 migrant labourers and 60-70% of them said they were planning to stay back. Replacing them is not easy as youth from Telangana do not prefer blue-collared jobs, he said.
Co-convenor of CII National Council for MSME Mahesh K. Desai said such migration was not uncommon as every year some of the workers in industrial units from other States such as Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh go back to their native places with the onset of monsoon to work on farms. “We provide for such absenteeism,” he said, adding they were typically daily wage earners, temporary labourers and unskilled. They used to return after Dasara. But the number of workers desiring to return to hometown is unprecedented. The most affected will be micro and small scale units, he added.
On Wednesday, Union Minister G. Kishan Reddy told a webinar organised by FTCCI that companies need to persuade migrant labourers to stay back.