India’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) on Tuesday resumed production at its Manesar plant, with around 2,000 workers working on a single shift basis.
This plant has been opened after around 40 days of closure in the wake of the nationwide coronavirus lockdown.
Operations at both Manesar and Gurugram, sector-18 plants facilities were suspended since March 22.
The company had received the approval of the local administration on April 22 to start production at the unit with a limited number of employees.
"Production has been started at the Manesar plant and the first car was roll out on Tuesday," Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Chairman R C Bhargava said in a statement.
The Gurugram district administration had allowed the auto major to run the facility on a single shift basis while fixing the total number of employees at the plant at 4,696.
MSI's Manesar plant is outside the limits of Gurugram Municipal Corporation, while its Gurugram plant falls within the city limits.
The number of employees coming to work on Tuesday was just around a fifth of the total workers in the Manesar plant, which has 10,000-12,000 workers in total.
"The production has already commenced at the Manesar plant. We have not set any targets but will go depending on market conditions and following all the standard operating procedure set by the government,” Bhargava said, adding that we would depend on government regulations like when two shifts would be allowed when manpower could be increased and when the supply chain would become fitter.
The company has also restarted production in its plant in Gurugram Sector 18, which largely manufactures Alto and the WagonR models. As the company has a larger non-production activities there such as R&D, etc., sources indicated that about 3,500 persons (work strength of 12,000 or more) reported for duty on Tuesday.
For social distancing, the company developed an app called Maruti Suzuki Wellness-Mitra and contacted all its workers. Through this app, arrangements were made to collect data of the workers' location and their health-related information as well as their personal problems.
Through this app, Maruti Suzuki management has approached almost all their workers and they are also being asked to be sensitive to coronavirus infection.
The company has also installed a specially constructed sanitization tunnel at the company gate and employees are being sanitized at the time of entering and exiting the plant.
Apart from this workers body temperature is also being checked with thermoscanner at the time of arrival and departure of the workers. All workers have been made mandatory to wear gloves and masks.
Employees would be divided into shifts and alternate day rosters with staggered shift start and end timings.
For screening and monitoring, it has been recommended to use Aarogya Setu and social distancing markings are being laid out to ensure a distance of two metres at all crowded areas like entry gate, bus stops, water coolers, canteens.
Apart from this, since April 20, when the administration began granting permission to industries to resume work, a total of 1,330 establishments, with a cumulative staff of 1,06,751 workers, have been permitted to resume work in the Gurugram district.
Apart from industrial units, permission has also been granted to certain other entities to operate, including seven brick kilns which employ 568 workers. Permission has also been granted to resume construction activities at 96 sites across the district, cumulatively employing 20,228 workers.
