Raining trouble at manufacturing hubs

Vehicles splashing through tyre-deep flooded main roads, pumpsets sputtering gamely as they suck out waters and spew them out on to bylanes, eddies forming around storm-water drains clogged with debris — this is the scene at the North Phase of Ambattur Industrial Estate to the west of Chennai.

Nothing new for the industrial estate itself — a hub of small-scale manufacturing units supplying to automobile OEMs and other large engineering units. Water-logged roads, flooded industrial units, moisture-damaged electronics equipment... The story has been the same.

A drive through the flooded roads leaves one wondering if just one night’s rain can do so much damage. The scene outside many factories is one of squalor and completely at variance with the name boards boasting their credentials of catering to some of the largest automobile MNCs.

D Ravi, President, Ambattur Industrial Estate Manufacturers’ Association, attributes the problem to incomplete drainage work and a patchy network. Water from the surrounding residential areas is let into the industrial estate and this inundates the area before reaching a canal or a water body.

Stormwater pipeline work was started but has not been completed. Even a month before the monsoon, the authorities had promised to get the work done on time.

The North Phase of the industrial estate has always been prone to flooding. It was to have been linked by a stormwater drain network to the Cooum river, but that has not been done, Ravi said.

He recalls after the December 2015 floods, when component manufacturers were hit badly, some OEMs had threatened to stop orders to SSIs that remained located in the problem areas. The units had been asked to shift.

If this problem repeats every monsoon, the industrial estate’s reputation will take a beating, he said.

At the Guindy industrial estate, too, the situation is the same, says an estate association representative. The open stormwater drains are clogged and debris has not been cleared and the roads are flooded. Workers are not able to report for work and nearly 40 per cent absenteeism is reported and production has been affected. If the rain continues for a couple of more days, manufacturing units could be flooded, he said.

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