ONGOLE: About 40 to 45 per cent of the small-scale granite industries have resumed business after lockdown. Reason: Having lost their source of livelihood, migrant labourers, who left for their native places four months ago, were eager to come back to work.
Industrialists, who were looking to reopen their units somehow, were more than pleased when contacted by the migrant workers and provided them transport facility. Most workers hailed from Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal and Jharkhand.
“As per norms, we have to pay Rs 44,460 towards electricity charges and another Rs 30,000 towards minimum consumption charge, irrespective of the condition of our industry. In addition, we had to pay the watchman, bank EMIs, all these calculated to Rs 1 lakh per month. This is the situation when our industries were closed. So we hit upon an idea that we should run a single shift so that we at least meet monthly expenses. So we arranged transport — cars, buses, flights — for the migrant labourers to come back so that work would resume. It might be helpful if the government could run a few special Shramik trains for the granite workers,” Small-Scale Granite Industries’ Association (SSGIA) president Yerramneni Koteswara Rao told TNIE on Thursday.
It may be noted there are 1,650 small-scale granite ancillary industries in Chimakurthy, which provide livelihood to around 7,000 labourers, and have an annual business turnover of Rs 2,000 crore to Rs 2,500 crore per annum.
SSGIA district president K Sekhar Reddy said he arranged transport facility for six Rajasthan-based granite machinery workers, which cost him around Rs 35,000. “By doing so at least we can restart the units,” he explained. “We paid for the workers’ transport because of their expertise in dealing with rock cutting and polishing works. They play a key role in all granite industries, not only in Chimakurthy, but in Martur, Ballikurava, Budawada and Gullapalli Growth Centre industries too,” he said.
Rajendra (27), a worker said, “We are a group of five workers from Jharkhand. We came here with our boss by a car two weeks ago. We love to work here, the owners give us respect and the pay is good. We went to our native place in April and since then we didn’t have work to do. Then we contacted him and expressed our willingness to work, he came down and brought us here.” The five workers have started working from July 21.
“About 500 workers from Bihar are working here. After imposition of lockdown, many of us left for our native places. As we didn’t have sufficient opportunities to earn money there, we contacted our owner, to take us back. I paid Rs 12,000 for my air ticket and the company promised to reimburse the amount. I am happy that we have resumed work and will earn money like earlier days,” said Santhosh Singh, a worker.