Industrial unrest, sickness on a downtrend: survey

Bucking all round industrial slowdown, the number of strikes and lockouts as well as sick/weak small scale units declined by about 20 per cent even as the government exhorted industry to become more competitive.

Strikes declined from 540 in 1999 to 426 in the year 2000, whereas the number of lockouts fell from 387 to 345, according to the Economic Survey 2001-02 presented by Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha in Parliament on Tuesday.

While there was a marginal increase in the incidence of sickness in the medium and large sector, the total number of sick SSI units declined to 249,630 from 304,235 units in 1999-2000.

The number of sick/weak units in the non-SSI sector increased to 3317 in 2000-01 from 3164 in the previous fiscal. Among these 3317 non-SSI units, 2942 belonged to the private sector.

The mandays lost on account of strikes and lockouts registered a lower increase at two million in the year 2000 against 4.7 million mandays in the previous year. The mandays lost due to lockouts increased by 0.6 million even as those lost on account of strikes declined by 1.4 million over the same period.

PTI

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