Despite the COVID-19 scare towards the end of the recently concluded financial year, the HMT Kalamassery unit has posted a profit of ₹1.73 crore.
After COVID-19 cases were reported from Kerala towards the end of January, a few customers like the Railways had not conducted inspections to make purchases, resulting in fewer sales towards the end of the year. But the company had still managed to register a profit for the second year in a row, said HMT general technical manager S. Balamurugesan.
If not for the lockdown and difficulty in receiving equipment from other States, production might have been higher, said P. Krishnadas, secretary of the CITU-affiliated HMT Employees Union. A few private companies had also placed orders but refused to purchase them earlier in the financial year fearing a recession-like situation, he said.
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But since the four other HMT units in the country had been registering losses consistently, employees of the Kalamassery unit were not benefitting despite the profits, he said.
While the company used to function with 3,500 permanent staffers during its heyday, the numbers had dwindled to 145 permanent employees. Despite a good performance, if recruitments are not made, the company stands to lose since several senior employees are set to retire next year, Mr. Krishnadas said.
A nearly 10-year ban on recruitment had led to a wide gap between the number of people retiring and new hires, which had also affected technology transfer within the company, Mr. Balamurugesan said. But the ban was gradually being lifted and engineers were now being hired on a permanent basis, he said.
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