Tirupur : Vehicle sales have been strong and knitwear exports have been rising smartly for the past three months.This has ensured good business in the industrial towns of Coimbatore and Tirupur, but there is a problem of sorts.
These towns, which were once spilling over with excess migrant labour, are now facing a huge manpower shortage.
Coimbatore is one of the largest component suppliers for automakers such as Ashok Leyland and Maruti and Tirupur is India’s knitwear capital. It’s experiencing a surge in demand from US and Europe, its key export destinations.
Both are facing labour shortage, and the reason—the government’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA).
More than half of the labour force in both the industrial towns are migrant.
An unskilled labourer gets around Rs 150 in Coimbatore or Tirupur for an 8-hour shift, while a skilled labourer gets upwards of Rs 300 and he works far from home.
But with the rural employment scheme, people just have to work for two hours to get Rs 100-Rs 110 and they earn these wages in their hometown itself.
Meanwhile, a near normal monsoon in the labour belt of southern Tamil Nadu has also raised hopes of a good farm income. But the government’s flagship scheme, the NREGA, while proving to be a boon for the rural folk has left industrial growth in a spot of bother |
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