About 60% restoration work done at Wistron unit: Karnataka labour minister.

Restoration work at the Wistron Narasapura plant near Bengaluru, which was vandalised in December over wage issues, is nearly 60 per cent complete, said Karnataka Labour Minister A S Hebbar, while maintaining that their priority is to restart the plant within 2-3 weeks and to make sure all the workers get back to work. All dues of the employees have also been cleared by the company, he confirmed.

He said the Taiwanese company which manufactures Apple iPhones apart from Lenovo and Microsoft products has placed an order of over 800 laptops for its staff. The glass facades that were ransacked during the violence have also been replaced, he added.

The company declined to comment on the status of restoration of the plant.

Early December, thousands of people, including employees, had vandalised glass facades, ATM machines, CCTV cameras, vehicles and other equipment at the Wistron campus located near Bengaluru on the issue of salary deductions and untimely payments of wages

There were also allegations of looting of several thousand iPhones, laptops and television sets from the premises. In total, the arson and violence had cost around Rs. 50 crore to the company.

The company had later sacked its vice president Vincent Lee who oversaw the business in India as it admitted to lapses in payment to workers at the facility.

“Since the unfortunate events at our Narasapura facility we have been investigating and have found that some workers were not paid correctly, or on time. We deeply regret this and apologize to all of our workers,” the company had then said in a statement.

BS