Maruti Suzuki India Limited has got the official permission from the Gurugram district administration to resume the operations at the Manesar manufacturing facility. The Manesar facility employs a total of 9,800 workers. The Indian automaker had applied for permission to work with half of the workforce. However, the authorities have allowed Maruti Suzuki to resume their operations with 600 workers only. The ongoing COVID-19 lockdown has given a major blow to the automotive industry in India which was already struggling for a long time. Plants had to shut their productions and the dealerships are also closed.
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VS Kundu, who is the monitoring officer for COVID-19 in GUrugram said that Maruti Suzuki needs to ensure the safety of all the workers before resuming production. Therefore, he wants them to start with a small number of workers and as the things begin to stabilise, they can scale the production up. Although MSIL has got permission to operate in the Manesar facility with a limited number of workers, there is no update about the Gurugram facility. Maruti Suzuki says that it’s a challenge working with only the Manesar facility being active as they need to regularly transport and communicate with the Gurugram unit.
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Another major reason why Maruti Suzuki is resisting resuming production is that different workers have different backgrounds and come from different parts of India. For instance, Punjab is observing a complete lockdown and therefore, no one will be able to make it into the Manesar facility.
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Maruti Suzuki is still evaluating the possibility of resuming operations at the Manesar facility with the challenges they are facing due to the current situation. MSIL Chairman RC Bhargava told PTI, “We will start operations whenever we can maintain continuous production and sell it (vehicles), which is not possible at this point of time.” Around 300 different industries had applied to resume their operations out of which only 30 have got an official permission till now.
