Date:19/03/2004 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/03/19/stories/2004031900600400.htm

Back NTC units report higher productivity

G. Gurumurthy

Coimbatore , March 18

NATIONAL Textile Corporation (NTC), which is in the throes of labour restructuring and organisational revamp, has been buoyed by improved productivity and higher capacity utilisation recorded by its functioning textile units affiliated to various subsidiaries in the past three months.

At least 43 of the 53 viable textile units identified for revival or revamp have contributed to the NTC's shored-up monthly production-cum-sale, which has kept up since December last, according to Mr K. Ramachandran Pillai, while-time Director (Human Resource), NTC National Holding Company from Delhi.

The monthly turnover of the NTC units spread over nine subsidiary companies across the country has spurted to Rs 50 crore plus from the average monthly sale of Rs 30-35 crore recorded in the previous years.

The capacity utilisation of the plants has markedly risen to the 80-85 per cent levels from the previous 50-60 per cent band, Mr Pillai added.

Speaking to Business Line, the NTC Director said that the effective monitoring and weekly productivity assessments are among factors that had gone into buttressing the plant working.

The structured downsizing of NTC's labour force - forming part of the NTC's revamp strategy - has also enabled the public sector textile monolith bring down its labour bill by Rs 180 crore from the earlier Rs 480 crore to Rs 300 crore in the past two years since the introduction of the voluntary separation of workers in April 2002.

NTC subsidiary companies nationwide have so far shed 40,000 workers and employees through VRS involving 66 textile units slated for eventual winding up through closure/asset sale route.

According to Mr Pillai, the voluntary separation of workers gone through in NTC had largely remained smooth and as per schedule, which might turn out to be a `case study' for labour restructuring in the public sector.

It has also seen induction of 5,000 `bhadli' (casual) workers recently into confirmed service in its textile units across the country but that had not actually entailed any additional wage burden.