HUBBALLI: An industrialist from Hubballi has offered air tickets to bring back technicians from West Bengal and Tamil Nadu to run his leather factory, which was unable to resume operations due to the unavailability of skilled technicians.
Chandrakanth Gadikar had invested about Rs 1 crore to start the factory at Gamanagatti and Tarihal industrial areas in Hubballi. Construction work and machinery installation work was completed in February this year but a month later the company had to stop operations following the lockdown.
After the lockdown was relaxed, Gadikar wanted to resume operations but not without the technicians who hailed from West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Hence he decided to offer air tickets to five of them to come to Hubballi. While three will land in Bengaluru from Kolkata this week, two will fly down to Hubballi from Chennai next week.
Gadikar said that he started the leather factory to produce export quality products like jackets, bags, wallets, gloves, footwear and other leather products.
"I have 30 people in the factory. There are no local technicians to operate leather related machinery. Therefore I employed five technicians from other states. Once they return to work, we shall train locals to operate the machinery which will help us in emergency situations," he noted.