Industries facing crisis in Chittoor amid lockdown exemptions, layoffs employees

Tirupati: One side migrant labour left the working places and another side factories have been giving layoff to its permanent workers due to downfall of the business, this is the current tough situation in Chittoor District industries.

It may be noted that more than 2500 small and medium as well as large scale industries were running in Chittoor district at Sathyavedu Sricity, Chittoor, Tirupati, Kuppam as well as Nagari industrial clusters.

Major thing is textile and granite industries are facing severe labour scarcity to run their units. Textile industries concentrated in and around of eastern mandals like Srikalahasti and Nagari. In these areas many cotton mills are facing business crisis. Few industries were not in a position to give salaries to its employees. At the same time they did not receive subsidy funds from the Government of India for many months. This was also shown a bad impact on textile and cotton mills running. Out of 10 cotton mills only 3 are running without loss, another 7 industries were financially not in a healthy position.

Many power looms are also facing severe financial loss due to lack of orders from clients, only they are running power looms by 50 workers only. They announced layoff to remaining 50 % laybour who were working in Nagari , YekambaraKuppam as well as Chinthala patted clusters.

At the other end Kuppam and Chittoor granite industries have been facing workers shortage due to migrant labour left from Kuppam to their native places. Though the government has given relaxation from lock down they are not in a position to run the granite industries. Here major involvement of Bihar, Chhattisgarh as well TamilNadu migrant workers only industries were running. Now the situation has changed because all the migrant labour went to their home states during the corona lock down period. Industries are facing tough times to fill up this vacuum with local labour, because many difficulties were there to engage local labour in granite industries. In fact migrant labour is very skilled in cutting granites and other stones when compared to local labour.

Similarly in the Sricity specil economic zone many industries have been giving layoff to its company employees temporarily due to slowdown of the business in abroad markets. Most of the products were exporting to foreign countries market by the Sricity industries. According to information on the hole around 2000 workers and employees were given layoff by the industries managements.

A granite laying contractor N Swamy in Tirupati, told to The Hans India that " I was showing the employment to around 60 migrant workers in granite cutting and laying industry, all of my engaged labour 20 days back went to their native place Jharkhand and Bihar states, now I have to search local workers for this work, but there was lot of difference in between local and migrant workers in terms of working style".