HMT staff without salary for 14 months

Arun Sharma

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, October 1

Nearly 1,600 employees of the HMT, Pinjore, have not been paid salary for the past 14 months as the factory has been in the red for a long time. While employees of the public sector unit have now decided to resort to protests, Shivalik Vikas Manch president Vijay Bansal has sought the intervention of five Union Ministers from the state to help revive the sick unit.

The Pinjore unit of the HMT was the first one to be established away from its Bengaluru factory in 1963-64. During the Green Revolution, it was given the responsibility of manufacturing tractors in 1971. It provided employment opportunities. The youth of the area were trained technically at the HMT training centre. Every year, about 250 youth were trained under the scheme, amd many of them were absorbed by the HMT. The unit made profits, contributing to the state exchequer, besides feeding other units of the HMT. At one stage, it was employing 7,000 persons, while thousands of others gained indirectly.

However, in the 1990s, it started slipping into the red. HMT Workers Union president Diwan Chand said in 2013, the Centre announced a revival package of Rs 1,083 crore for the tractor unit. The package could not realise the desired objectives as it was “short-sighted” and did not take into confidence all stakeholders. A mere Rs 93 crore was allocated for working capital, which soon dried up and things remained unchanged. The unit, which used to manufacture 19,000 tractors in a year, hardly manufactured 100-150 tractors each month now, he said.

He said the families of 1,600 HMT employees were going through a tough time as no salary had disbursed after July last year.

The Shivalik Vikas Manch president said the state was represented by five Union Ministers — Sushma Swaraj, Birender Singh, Rao Inderjit, Krishan Pal Gurjar and Suresh Prabhu. He urged them to intervene to save the future of these employees.