Allaying fears of another protest, Apple Inc largest supplier Foxconn is set to resume work at its iPhone manufacturing facility in Chennai this week. This comes after state assembly member K Selvaperunthagai confirmed that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin announced in the assembly that the plant would reopen on Wednesday.
The production at the Foxconn plant, in Sriperumbudur, which employs about 17,000, came to a halt on December 18 following a protest by workers over stale food served to the workers that resulted in food poisoning to 250 workers.
Meanwhile, Apple on Monday stated that the Foxconn India plant remains on probation and it would continue monitoring conditions at workers’ dormitories and dining halls, along with independent auditors.
“Workers will start to return gradually as soon as we are certain our standards are being met in every dormitory and dining area,” Apple said in a statement.
Foxconn said: “We have implemented a range of corrective actions to ensure this cannot happen again and a rigorous monitoring system to ensure workers can raise any concerns they may have, including anonymously.”
Foxconn has been making the iPhone 12 and testing production of the iPhone 13 at the Sriperumbudur facility, its only plant in India. Apple has eight other suppliers in India.
The plant will restart production on Wednesday with not more than 100 people and could take more than two months to resume full production. Meanwhile, the state government plans to build a hostel facility with a capacity to house tens of thousands of workers from various industries to address the concerns about standards of dormitories and dining facilities.
“The government is clear that they don’t want such incidents to happen again,” Selvaperunthagai said.
