Maruti's Manesar plant to reopen on Aug 21

Maruti Suzuki India will lift the month-long lockout at its violence-hit Manesar plant and resume operations on August 21, the company said on Thursday.

The country's largest car-maker has also issued termination notices to 500 regular workers, who were allegedly involved in the July 18 violence in which one senior executive was killed and nearly 100 others were injured.

"We plan to lift the lockout from August 21 and resume production at Manesar," Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Chairman R C Bhargava told reporters in New Delhi.

In response to a question whether they had ever anticipated trouble of this nature Shinzo Nakanishi, managing director and CEO of Maruti Suzuki India admitted that this had never crossed their minds when the violence led to the death of a manager and ninty nine others were injured.

"I was taken aback when the incident took place. Our first priority was to provide adequate safety to the workers who have been loyal to the company and refused to take part in violent incidents. Besides the main culprit who was arrested yesterday and 12 executive members of the union over 150 workers who took part in the ugly incident have been told that their services are not required. They would be given three months salary and 15 days of salary for each year they had worked for," he said.

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Maruti Suzuki India had declared a lockout at the Manesar plant on July 21, stating the safety and well-being of its employees were paramount to the company.

The Manesar unit is at present guarded by the Haryana Police. The Police had last week said it would continue to provide security and station a full battalion, comprising 500-600 policemen, inside the facility where some of the popular car models were made.

On the fate of workers involved in the violence, Bhargava said: "We have issued termination notices to 500 regular workers."

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The plant, while on full operations before the violence, employed around 3,000 workers, of which around 1,600 were permanent employees. Besides, about 700 managerial people were also working at the plant.

The Manesar plant, which has an annual capacity of 550,000 units, rolls out the company's popular models Swift, entry level sedan DZiRE and SX4 along with compact car A-Star.

The Haryana government had announced formation of a special investigation team (SIT) headed by Assistant Commissioner of Police Ravinder Tomar to probe violence at Manesar plant.

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On August 1, the police had arrested 10 office bearers of the Maruti Suzuki Workers' Union, including its President Ram Meher and General Secretary Sarabjit Singh, taking the total number of workers arrested to 114 in relation to the incident.

Last year the company had witnessed three incidents of labour unrest at Manesar plant due to which it had suffered a loss of around Rs 2,500 crore (Rs 25 billion) for 83,000 units.

With additional inputs from PTI