PremiumChina has ordered a seven-day lockdown of the region surrounding Foxconn Technology Group's main plant in Zhengzhou, a move that will significantly restrict shipments into and out of the biggest iPhone manufacturing in the world.
A seven-day lockdown has been imposed in the region surrounding Foxconn’s main plant in Zhengzhou, China. It is expected to significantly restrict shipments into and out of the largest iPhone manufacturing in the world. According to a statement on the local government's WeChat account, the lockdown would continue until November 9.
In an effort to lessen the potential inconvenience, the company has raised wages and made backup plans from its other Chinese operations in case Zhengzhou's production lines become unresponsive. Recently, efforts have been made to dispel rumours that some of the sick staff members had passed away on social media.
The sudden move is consistent with Beijing's Covid Zero outbreak-suppression strategy and is likely to significantly disrupt Foxconn's primary operations base. The Taiwanese business, whose primary publicly traded arm is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., is dealing with a Covid flare-up that sent some of its 200,000 employees into quarantine and caused others to leave the building — some on foot.
After some of their coworkers were placed in quarantine due to a coronavirus pandemic, the northern Chinese workers who assemble Apple's iPhone 14 abandoned the factory in order to evade COVID-19 limitations. Videos of what looked to be Foxconn employees carrying their possessions while walking down a road and scaling gates have surfaced on Chinese social media.
The Foxconn complex in Zhengzhou, Henan province, which has space for up to 350,000 employees, is one of the largest factories in China assembling goods for Apple, including its latest iPhone 14 devices.
Outbreaks have resulted in the lockdown of entire cities in China. The incidents show growing public discontent with China's "zero-COVID" policy, which sees the government enforcing strict testing, isolation, and lockdown requirements whenever infections are identified in an effort to prevent outbreaks.
The Chinese have evolved a cunning way of using "Jie mi, jie mi" (give me rice), which sounds similar to the iconic Bollywood song Jimmy Jimmy from Disco Dancer, to perform quiet protests in an effort to call attention to the misery of the populace brought on by the zero-COVID policy, which has effectively walled off China from the outside world.
(With agency inputs)