Govt planning to bring back labour: Industry minister

Ludhiana: Industry minister Sundar Sham Arora on Thursday visited Ludhiana and interacted with city businessmen at Circuit House. In a big announcement Arora claimed that soon Punjab government was planning to run trains and buses to ferry migrant workers back to Punjab, who want to come back and join work at factories.
He said, “About 12 lakh migrant workers from Punjab had registered to go back to their home states, of which almost 50% changed their mind and stayed back because chief minister Amarinder Singh took a bold decision to open factories in the state.As far as workers who went back home are concerned, they too are now wanting to come back after coming to know that factories are running here. Based upon the input received from the industrialists that workers want to come back our government is looking at ways to do so and we might plan running trains and buses from the home states of migrant workers to Punjab.”
Upkar Singh Ahuja, president, Chamber of Industrial and Commercial Undertakings (CICU), said, “We raised several issues and urged him to expedite GST and VAT refunds which have been stuck for a very long time. In addition to this, other issues discussed were restarting of mining, resolution of labour issues and waiver of fixed charges for industrial power consumers. The minister has also assured us that skill centres will be upgraded and Halwara airport will be completed on time.”
Rahul Ahuja, chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry (Punjab) , added, “We took up the matter of shortage of labour in factories, responding to which the minister assured that government will do what so ever it can to overcome this problem. Besides, the state is planning to bring back workers via buses and trains from their home states to Punjab.”
According to Pankaj Sharma, general secretary of CICU, “The main demands put forward by us included one time settlement for old C-forms from businessmen, allowing the export of PPE kits because the manufacturers of these kits are facing shortage of orders. The industry minister gave us a patient hearing and assured us that all our demands will be looked into.”