The iPhone factory near Chennai will continue to remain shut this week, due to an incident that happened to cause workers unrest.
The company is operated by Foxconn, a Taiwanese contract electronics manufacturer, and this will definitely affect the production of Apple smartphones. The company has recently started the trial production of the latest iPhone 13 at the Chennai Foxconn plant.
Unrest Among Workers At Apple’s Chennai Facility
The iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 are already being manufactured at this facility, whereas, the iPhone SE is being produced at the Wistron plant in Bengaluru.
As per reports, a group of women employees in Foxconn began protesting against the company officials. Apparently, the officials were accused of lack of transparency in disclosing the whereabouts and health conditions of their colleagues who were in the hospital after suffering from food poisoning.
There has been an outbreak of acute diarrhoeal disease (ADD) among the Foxconn employees that have been staying in the International Maritime Academy at Pudhuchathiram village in Tiruvallur district. This apparently is the result of the hostel food they ate.
Fake Video Led To Protests?
250 workers have been treated as outpatients and 159 of them were admitted to the hospital. Thankfully, there haven’t been any deaths.
155 people of these 159 were discharged on Saturday.
To make matters worse, a fake video was circulated on social media that stated that nine workers had died of food poisoning.
This led to the aforementioned unrest among employees, and around 2000 women blocked the Chennnai-Bengaluru National Highway. This also caused a major disturbance in the vehicular traffic for several hours.
Apple’s production in India had also taken a major hit during the pandemic. Tamil Nadu was among the worst-hit Covid-19 hotspots in India, in the second wave of pandemic.
According to the report by Reuters, over 50% of workers at the Foxconn unit in Tamil Nadu had tested Covid positive, cutting down the production capacity in the unit by 50%.
More than 100 employees working at the facility tested Covid-19 positive.
The company had enforced a no-entry ban at its factory in the capital of Chennai until late May.
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