As a part of its boycott Chinese goods campaign, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has sent a communication to Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh urging him to impose ban on usage of Chinese construction machinery and equipments having Internet of Things (IOT) devices which are able to transmit sensitive information to owners of the company in China.
CAIT national president B C Bhartia in letter to Rajnath Singh said that in various critical projects in border areas, security sensitive areas, highways, infrastructure projects various machines supplied by China and its spare parts are being used quite often.
“In many cases, Indian Companies doing such Construction jobs are using Chinese machines which are installed with Internet of Things (IOT) devices which transmit machine operating parameters including location in real time,” he said.
Bhartia said that if such machines are used in strategically important locations of Construction work in border areas or any other sensitive area which is of much importance for defence, all the data of the machine as also their locations, operating hours and other strategic details can be transmitted to the servers owned by the owner of Chinese companies located in China.
"we have been given to understand two prominent companies using Chinese construction equipment are Putzmeister owned by SANY China and Schwing stetter India, owned by XCMG China" are involved in various such projects. Their machines are duly equipped with IOT devices as stated above and the data accrued by these machines can be used for other purposes,” he said.
The CAIT has urged the minister to take a note of the seriousness of the issue and take necessary steps to impose restrictions on using such machines particularly in border and other sensitive areas in the larger interest of the security and sovereignty of the country.