With accident behind it, the sparkle is back in Sivakasi

The sparkle is back in Sivakasi. The local people seem to have put behind them the recent accident in a firecracker unit that left nearly 40 people dead and several seriously injured. With hardly two months to go for Diwali, these units are now working overtime to meet the demand.

But the people are very cautious, wary even, of visitors. They avoid talking to anyone not known to them. “Vella vandiya pathodane aviga bayapadaraha.... (on seeing your white car, they get scared, assuming that you are a government official),” a man said in the distinctive Madurai accent, as our cab pulled up in front of what appeared a large firecracker unit.

The man, in a lungi and a blue vest, introduced himself as Sanmugaraja, supervisor of the unit. He said work starts almost at the crack of dawn and goes on till 6-6.30 in the evening. His unit was closed for five days from September 5, but “our labourers insisted that we reopen, as they have been losing their daily wages.”

According to him, accidents are very common here; it is so much talked about this time because so many lives were lost. In his unit, where 48 people can work, there are only 24 now, “as ‘white-car officers’ come for inspection everyday. However, even after much coaxing, he refused to allow us inside the unit.

The Sivakasi belt is India’s firecrackers manufacturing hub meeting almost 90 per cent of the country’s demand, which is pegged at Rs 2,500 crore per annum. As this is a “very profitable business and a licence is easy to get, every year more small units crop up,” says S. Srinivasan, Additional Secretary, Tamil Nadu Fireworks & Amorces Manufacturers Association.

Acute labour shortage

As there is already an “acute labour shortage in the belt, these new units employ literally anybody who is willing to work regardless of whether or not they have any knowledge of these hazardous chemicals and how to handle them… this is what leads to accidents,” he says.

A drive through the villages in and around the three major taluks in the belt — Sivakasi, Sathur and Virudunagar — reveals that because of the accident and the subsequent “surprise” inspections by Government officials, many workers have been rendered jobless. As most of these (over 800, all over the villages of these taluks) units used to employ twice the stipulated number of workers, many people were “asked not to come anyway near the factory for a couple of weeks,” said an old man, who was sitting among a set of youths and teenagers near a village panchayat office.

“We hope to go to work from next week,” one of the young men said with confidence. He said he used to earn at least Rs 250 a day, “and that is gone now.” His job was to wind coloured jute over solid pieces of chemicals to make atom bombs. “They pay Rs 15 for every 100 pieces.”

“Aviga sollivitta naanga povom (We will go, if they call us), sir,” said a boy, who appeared to be in his early teens.

When this correspondent asked a middle-aged woman why she wanted to work in a firecracker unit despite knowing that it is unsafe, she shot back, “You also report a lot of bus accidents; have you stopped travelling by bus?”

> ravikumar.ramanujam@thehindu.co.in

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