New Delhi: Defence production has virtually come to a standstill due to the lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
There are fears that the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) may not be able to meet targets for this financial year on account of the 21-day closure, sources said. OFB supplies a wide range of items ranging from rifles, howitzers, tanks and rockets to the defence forces.
Prior to the lockdown, when local authorities across the country had issued restrictive orders, OFB had planned to continue operations at 50 per cent of the manpower that included production workers too. However, eventually a complete shutdown was observed in line with the general order from the government.
Even though production of defence items has been stopped, some factories are now making sanitisers, gloves, masks and other protective gear needed for Covid-19 fight.
This was following a call by the government for the OFB to step in. Vidarbha has three factories at Nagpur, Chandrapur and Bhandara engaged in different processes of making heavy ammunition used in tanks, artillery and rockets.
The Gun Carriage Factory (GCF) at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, which recently bagged the order to make the indigenous version of 155mm howitzers based on the Swedish Bofors, has also closed.
Sources concede lockdown will affect target achievement this fiscal. In some factories, unions have demanded that the month of April should also be included in financial year so the target can be achieved. However, recently the first batch of 1500 litres of sanitiser was issued from the Ordnance Factory Aruvankadu in Tamil Nadu. Hindustan Latex Ltd has been nominated as the nodal agency and it has placed an order of 13,000 litres sanitiser.
The factory at Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh is engaged in making masks and the Hazratpur factory also in the same state will join for the same, said Mukesh Singh, general secretary of Bharatiya Pratiraksha Mazdoor Sangh. The factory at Avadi in Tamil Nadu is making overall protective gear and the parachute factory at Agra is making tents that are also needed during the crisis, he said. Singh said workers have donated their two days’ salary for relief work.
