The ongoing Covid-19 lockdown has put the Indian automotive sector on backfoot. Numerous manufacturers had to shut down their production facilities and corporate offices keeping the safety of employees in mind and prevent the virus from spreading at a frightening speed. Now, after weeks of shut down, country’s largest manufacturer Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL) has received permission from the Gurgaon district administration to resume the operations at its Manesar production facility. According to the officials, Maruti Suzuki had applied for permission to resume plant operations with 4,696 employees, however, permission was granted only for 600 employees. Maruti Suzuki has a total of 9,800 employees at the Manesar plant and the company had applied for half of the employees as per the Government of India guidelines.
VS Kundu, Monitoring Officer for COVID-19 in Gurugram says that the authorities first want Maruti Suzuki to work out their system in order to ensure the safety of their workers. He adds that once the operation stabilises, the authorities can consider scaling up to more number of employees. However, despite getting permission to operate with a limited number of employees, there are still a couple of challenges ahead for Maruti Suzuki. The company says that its Manesar plant cannot operate independently of the Gurugram unit because many components move between both facilities. Maruti Suzuki had applied for permission for the Gurugram unit as well and is yet to get an update on the same.
Moreover, Maruti Suzuki says that some of the parts come from different parts of India, for instance, Punjab that is completely locked down and hence, the company is still evaluating if it can start operations in Manesar at present or not. The final decision on resuming operations is yet to be taken by the company. Commenting on the production status, 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.”
The administration has received around 300 applications from different industries that are looking to resume operations. However, permission has been granted to around 30 only.
