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| Rajkot engg industry faces shortage as workers turn to farms |
| Vimukt Dave / Mumbai/ Rajkot Jul 03, 2009, 00:32 IST |
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Lack of adequate manpower is staring at the over Rs 12,000-crore engineering industry of Rajkot with most of the labourers moving homewards to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to take up farming.
Rajkot houses 3,000-odd engineering industries mainly consisting of small and medium scale enterprises. The industry requires about 125,000 labourers and is currently facing a shortage of about 25,000 workers, according to market players. The reasons cited for this are lower wages and the growing need of knowledge based industry.
“Most of the labourers hail from states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Since the last one year, they have started migrating to their homeland to work in fields or take up other related works,” said Bhaveshbhai Patel, President, Rajkot Engineering Association.
The unorganised industry is growing at about 25 per cent from the past few years.
“The industry has been doing well so far. However, manpower shortage has become a major issue recently. It can hurt the growth of the sector in the near future. Skilled people are not ready to work here because they get better package elsewhere. As most of the industries in Rajkot are SMEs, they cannot afford higher pay packages.”
With the advancement in technology, newer machines too have come into the sector. And, workers do not have the required skill to operate them.
“Shortage of manpower is always a problem with the Rajkot engineering industry and this has hit productivity and threatened expansion plans of many companies. Underutilisation of available resources, technological backwardness and management incompetence are the results of shortage of competent and skilled manpower,” said Azaz Motiwala, CMD, Ikon Marketing Consultants.
However, he said one of the main reasons of manpower shortage is the pay scale, which is below average as compared with other fast growing industrial areas.
“Due to poor economic benefit available here, local skilled labourers are also migrating to other metro cities for better prospects,” said Motiwala.
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