Toyota Kirloskar Motor India Ltd recently notified that two of its employees at the Bidadi manufacturing plant near Bengaluru, have tested positive for COVID-19. The company said that due to health and safety concerns of other employees, it has temporarily suspended operations at the plant.
The automaker said in a statement that the two employees who tested positive had last attended work on 7 June and 16 June, respectively.
“As a first step and through appropriate contact tracing, Toyota Kirloskar has started identifying all those employees who may have had primary or secondary contact with the infected employees for necessary treatment and quarantine wherever necessary, and is in contact with the local Government authorities,” the company said in a statement.
The recent development at Toyota comes just weeks after employees at Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai’s manufacturing plants were tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The development is also a big concern for the Karnataka government as it has been trying to relax lockdown restrictions in the state.
Although Karnataka had been pretty much successful in containing the virus and preventing its transmission, it has been witnessing a surge in cases ever since interstate movement of people was allowed.
Toyota had resumed operations on May 26, after two months of lockdown that forced its two plants to temporarily shut down.
The company had partially restarted operations with a reduced workforce at its plants while all the Strategic Business Units office staff at Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata still continued to ‘work from home’.
“Operations at TKM plant have already been temporarily suspended so that required disinfection can be carried out at the plant,” the company said in a statement.
TKM said it has also extended all necessary support to the infected employees for medical treatment as well as quarantine procedures.
“The company is in touch with the families of the infected employees so as to support them to handle this situation carefully without further complications,” it added in the statement.
These recent cases at manufacturing units around the country, highlights the risks and challenges Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government faces in restarting automobile production in an effort to revive the economy after a near two-month lockdown to fight the spread of the coronavirus.
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