Punjab??s textile cluster, in Ludhiana and Lalru (about 30 km from Chandigarh), is gearing up to overcome the impact of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP). The scheme guarantees 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.
Manufacturing activity, done mostly by local women and migrant workers, has been affected and industrialists in the state are providing various incentives to retain the workforce.
Migrant workers who earlier took a month off between April and June now prefer to stay back in their hometowns in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar for a longer period, since they can earn for at least three months while remaining close to their families, said Hardyal Singh Cheema, the Joint Managing Director of Cheema Spintex and President of the Northern India Textile Mills?? Association (NITMA), Punjab.
??Textile manufacturing is a 24x7 production activity and non-availability of labour for a quarter of a year certainly affects production and profitability,?? he added.
In Punjab??s textile units local women work the morning shift and migrant labour the evening and night shifts. The men in Punjab avoid working in textile mills (the state has one of the largest textile clusters of India), preferring to engage in mechanical and agriculture-related vocations. The industry is therefore dependent on migrant labour.
S P Oswal, chairman of the Vardhman Group and past president of CII??s National Council on the Textile Industry, agrees that there is a labour shortage in the Punjab textile industry. ??Textile units are under-utilising their capacities by 30 per cent,?? he said.
Oswal said the problem is likely to linger, since waning regional disparities resulting from the development of backward areas by the government could further check the exodus of labour from one part of the country to another.
??Across the globe the textile sector utilises women workers. In China about 80-90 per cent of jobs in textile mills are done by women. In India, on the contrary, only 20-25 per cent of the workers in the textile sector are women,?? he said.
Some units are mulling more automation to reduce their dependence on labour. Entrepreneurs, believing that women workers are more result-oriented, are considering asking the Punjab government to introduce legislation that will allow female semi-skilled workers to work in night shifts.
Oswal said that this would both help combat the labour shortage and empower women in the Punjab hinterland.
Nahar Industrial Enterprise Limited (NIEL), a leading vertically integrated textile and apparel company in Punjab, has sought the state government??s permission to hire women workers for the evening shift at its spinning unit near Ludhiana.
Kamal Oswal, NIEL??s joint managing director, is considering enhancing the degree of automation of processes to mitigate the impact of labour scarcity. NIEL has also developed colonies for 8,000 workers at its Lalru unit, said Kamal Oswal.
Perceiving the uncertainty over labour supply, some more companies are providing housing to migrant labour.
Rajiv Bhambri, vice-president (finance) of Supreme Yarns Limited, Ludhiana, said that a small but organised dwelling, adjacent to the workplace, helps to retain labour and they do not overstay on their visits to their hometowns. ??We have a provision to accommodate 1,000 workers in decent accommodation. Due to a fair degree of automation in our operations a backend support of 1,000 workers provides a cushion to run processes at optimum capacity,?? he added.
The big companies can provide the housing incentive to migrant labour; smaller ones, however, have no option but to increase automation to minimise the role of manual labour.
