Workforce reduced to half, Noida NSEZ plans job portal to fill void

Noida: The Noida Special Economic Zone (NSEZ) is looking at a technological solution for its labour problem. It is planning to launch a job portal to fill up vacancies in its factories as the departure of hundreds of workers as well as the loss of many to Covid has reduced the workforce to nearly 50%.
SEZ members claim that a low count of workers has badly affected the workflow, leading to a weeks of lag in deliveries of orders.
While they are not sure if the migrant workers would return in time, it’s expected that the job portal will help announce vacancies and recruit replacements. The jobs which have the most openings are for fitters, assembly operators, technicians and store keepers.
From its original strength of some 40,000, the workforce at the NSEZ is down by 50%. Another 10,000 IT professionals have been pitching in with work from home since a nationwide lockdown was announced last year.
“Manufacturing speed has slowed down in the factories at the NSEZ. The daily attendance this week is around 50%, which is around 23,000. Additionally 10,000 IT employees have been working from home since the imposition of lockdown last year,” Ajay Goel, president, Noida Special Economic Zone Entrepreneurs Association, told TOI.
“Product output is around 40-50% on an average. Medical equipment industries have good export orders but are running at 65%-80% output. The output for engineering items is around 40%. The garments business has also been hit and doesn’t have much work inflow. The software industry is the least affected. So, we are working on a job portal, it will help us fill in vacancies,” he added.
Of the 240 factories that comprise the Noida SEZ, some 180 are currently operational. The remaining 60 units at NSEZ are habitually shut as they don’t operate.
Apart from the NSEZ, other micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Noida too are facing a workforce gap. “Many migrant workers went back to their hometowns for the crop cutting season and panchayat polls and stayed back because of the Covid upsurge. The situation may improve in a month as Covid cases drop,” said Kulmani Gupta, president of Indian Industries Association (IIA), Noida.
IIA is working with the district industries centre to solve the problem.
“We are asking workers to rejoin and hope once the markets reopen, they will. We are also facilitating vaccination for factory workers and are in talks with the district magistrate of Gautam Budh Nagar. Vaccination is the way forward for normalising the workforce,” said Anil Kumar of the centre.