Industrial activity in the State, which had picked up after the restrictions imposed during the lockdown last year were eased, seems to be getting affected again with the raging pandemic. While cluster outbreaks have been reported in industrial areas in the past fortnight, several manufacturing plants in the auto sector have already declared holiday to break the chain of infection.
In industrial areas
Multiple sources in the industry confirmed that several big automobile companies have declared holiday, and other factories that have adequate inventory have also shut down for a few days. A big number of cases have started being reported in factories from industrial areas in Jigani–Anekal–Bommasandra, Peenya, Doddaballapur, and Narasapura. Cluster outbreaks have been reported in pharma companies too.
“A lot of industries that have sufficient stock have shut down without affecting the supply chain. Several other industries have shut after cluster outbreaks were reported while some have closed to prevent outbreaks,” Karnataka Employers’ Association president B.C. Prabhakar c onfirmed to The Hindu. According to him, companies in the pharma and defence-related manufacturing have not declared holiday, but a number of automobile manufacturing and components, electrical, and electronics industries have shut.
Among those that have been shut temporarily include Volvo truck plant at Hoskote, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India plant at Narasapura, Biesse Manufacturing in Bengaluru, and Automotive Axles in Mysuru, while Toyota plant in Bidadi has been shut down for scheduled annual maintenance of the plant that is coinciding with the raging pandemic time. Several ancillary units are also expected to follow suit. Earlier this week, HAL, the defence PSU, declared a plant holiday.
Incidentally, the State government in January made it mandatory for the industries to provide fully paid quarantine leave of 14 days for persons testing positive for COVID-19 and their primary contacts in the workplace under the Disaster Management Act, 2005. While industries functioned amid COVID-19 last year, both employers and employees are learnt to have become jittery during the second wave.
‘State of paranoia’
“Many factories are insisting on a negative RTPCR test report from employees absenting themselves from work even for a day. The paranoia about the employee bringing in the virus has heightened anxiety for the management while employees are losing leave or pay as RTPCR test results are getting delayed,” AITUC Bengaluru secretary M. Satyananda said.
The crumbling medical infrastructure, he said, had scared the workers this time, and they were informally asking for alternative working days or a three-day work that would enable social distancing on the shop floor and reduce human contact without affecting production.
