Elaborating on the development to open the factory, an official from HMT's Haldwani management said, "We had received orders for 5,500 watches from our Bengaluru office in December. We have to complete the order by March 2016.
NAINITAL: In a New Year gift for employees of the beleaguered Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) factory in Ranibagh, three km from Haldwani city, the unit, which has been closed since the last two years, will start functioning from Friday in order to complete its pending order of watches estimated to be worth Rs 1.5 crore. The power supply to the factory was restored on Wednesday.
Elaborating on the development to open the factory, an official from HMT's Haldwani management said, “We had received orders for 5,500 watches from our Bengaluru office in December. We have to complete the order by March 2016. The work has started for that.” He added that the factory may subsequently be transformed into an ordinance unit and will not function as an HMT arm after the pending orders are finished. This follows a decision of the central government to close all HMT units nationwide.
Employees are nevertheless celebrating what may be only a short lease of life for the HMT unit. “This is a big step towards the factory’s reincarnation,” said Khem Singh Rawat, an employee of HMT, who has been working in the factory since 1986.
Protests had been ongoing for the factory’s revival since the past one year. Employees say they are hopeful now that their future will be secure if the factory gets converted into an ordinance unit. “We are meeting Bhagat Singh Koshayri, MP from Nainital, on January 3. He has raised the issue with the central government to covert the facility into an ordinance unit, and was instrumental in getting our pending salaries cleared,” said Rawat.
The employees claim that the factory already has advanced machines to cater to ordinance projects as they had previously worked on the projects of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. “We would be happy if we can continue to work here as employees of the ordinance unit since we have experience in these things,” said a worker at the factory. The factory is spread over an area of over 91 acres and has more than 500 machines. It also has residential quarters for almost 300 employees.