By Sucheta Roy
The Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation has escalated its anti encroachment drive in Chikhali, which led to the demolition of several shops, warehouses and small businesses.The operation began in the last week, and it left almost 1,00,000 workers unemployed and jobless which impacted in the local economy a lot.
The businesses which were demolished used to play a crucial role in day-to-day life. It used to supply spare parts to the automobile industry in that region, which had a contribution to the annual turnover of approximately Rs.1,000 crores. Most of them were uneducated migrant workers from UP, Bihar, Marathwada and north Maharashtra, the civic officials said that these migrant workers were employed in small godowns,industrial units and workshops.
One of the businessmen, Samayan Shaikh said, “we have lost about 400 people who used to work in our industrial unit. Our entire unit has been demolished and all of us lost our jobs, and now we have nowhere to go”.Some of the workers have already started to return to their hometowns, and some of them have decided to stay in the city are struggling to find new jobs. The activists are claiming that it is very difficult to accommodate and give jobs to such a huge number of people.
A senior official of PCMC said that there were almost more than 1,700 small godowns and an equal number of industrial units in the Kudalwadi, Jadhavwadi and Pawar Vasti areas in Chikhali. Each of the small scale centres employed almost 5 to 7 people, while the industrial units gave jobs to almost 10 to 25 people based on the industry’s production capacity.
These establishments were developed in the last 25 to 30 years and were operating without any permission from PCMC’s building department and the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board. They were not following the labour laws. The corporation had sent many notices and warnings before but the owners and workers did not show any concern regarding the issue.
One of the activists, Maruti Bhapkar said, “majority of these units were set up during the time when these areas were under gram panchayat and others were built over the past few years but the civic officials failed to act on time. He added,“now the corporation should consider giving permission to the business owners so that they can now operate legally, which will save the employment of the people”.