Ludhiana industry grapples with labour shortage

Shivani Bhakoo

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, June 5

The industrial city of Ludhiana is grappling with severe labour shortage, especially of migrant workforce, with most of the units presenting an empty look with thin attendance. Although the shortage of migrant labour is quite common during May and June, but due to General Election this year, which continued for almost two months, the stay of migrants at their native places got prolonged, resulting in production losses to the industry.

According to manufacturers, as the industry is heavily dependent on migrant workforce, their absence has hit the production by approximately 30-40%. The migrant workforce in Ludhiana constitutes over 70% of the total workforce in manufacturing industry. According to estimates, there are over 8 lakh migrants in Ludhiana, including women and children.

Avinash Gambhir of Hans Fashions, who deals in garments business, said migrant labourers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar preferred to stay back at their respective native places during the entire election season this year. Since they are already at home, they don’t want to miss the weddings which are generally held during May and June. Their prolonged stay at native places has cast shadow over the manufacturing sector.

As per estimates, over one lakh units across all sectors such as manufacturers of auto parts, hand tools, cycle parts, spinning mills and garment manufacturers have been affected by the labour shortage.

“We are not able to execute the orders properly. The night shifts have been discontinued in the absence of workers. Though we were mentally prepared that migrant labourers will go during this season, but their prolonged stay has affected the production as the labour has still not returned,” said SC Ralhan, dealing in hand tools in Focal Point.

In the absence of easy availability of local labour (Punjabis), who are more interested in going abroad for greener pastures, the manufacturers are dependent on migrant workers. While the skilled labour is paid between Rs 15,000 and Rs 40,000 a month, depending on efficiency of the workers, the unskilled workers are paid up to Rs 20,000 per month.

GR Rahhan, another industrialist having a spinning mill by the name of Roamer, said production has been severely hit. “We do not get labour from Punjab and depend on migrant labour — skilled and unskilled both. We can foresee that the problem will worsen in the years to come. For this, the only solution seems to be technology upgrade. We need to update ourselves and hire educated Punjabi youth having knowledge about new technology and machines to resolve the labour crunch issue,” he said.