SATISH HANDA

Yamunanagar and Bahadurgarh are famous for manufacturing plywood in Haryana state suffering heavy loss due to farmers’ agitation at present. President of  Yamunanagar Plywood Manufacturers Association J.K.Bihani told that there are nearly a thousand plywood manufacturing units including saw mills and peeling units in the town in which over a lakh persons are employed directly or indirectly adversely affected  due to farmers agitation since past about two and half months as a result famous plywood industry at Yamunanagar is suffering heavy financial loss worth crores daily due to traffic jam at the borders severely affected transport system as a result industry facing severe shortage of raw material including nearly two lakh quintal popular and ‘safeda’ consumed by industry in the town everyday being procured from U.P, Punjab, Uttarakhand and other states as well as supply of manufactured stocks.

The manufacturers told that they are procuring basic raw material used in manufacturing plywood from Delhi and now facing shortage due to erratic transport services adversely affected production dropped up to 50%, besides also finding difficulty in despatch of manufactured goods.  They said, 70 to 80 trucks carrying goods were despatched to Delhi daily earlier has now been reduced to 30 to 35 and due to irregular supplies most of the buyers are delaying payments as a result industry facing severe financial crisis.

Plywood industry at Bahadurgarh, too, has incurred heavy loss due to farmers’ agitation where according to manufacturers the production has witnessed nearly 50% drop due to labour problem when most of the workers fail to join duty due to non-availability of transport. The industry owners told that have to spend  nearly 25% extra on freight of raw material purchased from Delhi and also spending nearly 25% extra amount towards freight on material supplied to buyers at Mumbai one of the prominent plywood market in the country by truck. They said, production dropped due to shortage of popular and ‘safeda’ being being from U.P for which they are paying nearly 40 to50% extra towards freight thus increasing their production cost. Most of the plywood manufacturers told that they are forced to utilize nearly 50% of their production capacity since after April 2020 due to lock down and KOVID-19 outbreak caused heavy slump.