M'rashtra industry cheers as migrants return: Minister

In a relief for industries in Maharashtra, thousands of migrants who had left the state in the past three months, have started returning to their workplaces, Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said here on Thursday.

The 'wapasi' of migrants to their 'karma-bhoomi' has started soon after the state went into Unlock 1.0 mode from June 1, when thousands of industries reopened in phases.

"In the past three months, around 35 lakh migrants had left the state for their homes in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, etc. But, now they are coming back and daily around 15,000 are returning from different states," Deshmukh said.

This will provide a fillip to the industries which have started operations but were running short of labourers, especially the skilled workers.

Presently, over 60,000 factories have restarted in Maharashtra and nearly 15 lakh workers across all categories have returned to their duties, according to an official of the industries department.

However, to tide over the immediate needs of workers faced by the industries, Industry Minister Subhash Desai last month suggested they could hire local labourers.

Desai has also assured that the government would set up training centres to develop the requisite skills for the new labourers to be employed by factories in the absence of the regular migrants.

Officials said that with the state government recently moving into high-gear mode with the signing of MoUs worth Rs 16,000 crore with various international companies, the labour requirements in the future is expected to go up significantly.

( With inputs from IANS )