The Virudhunagar district administration in Tamil Nadu has made it mandatory for all fireworks factories in the district to deploy their workers to undergo a one-week intense skill development training at the Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health. This comes following reports that the presence of unskilled workers was the cause of frequent fire accident outbreaks in factories.
It may be noted that Sivakasi, known as the fireworks capital of India, is in Virudhunagar district and has an annual turnover of Rs 6000 crores. Recently, 10 workers were killed while four others were grievously injured after an explosion in one of the prominent fireworks manufacturing factories in Sivakasi.
In the past five years from 2019-2024, 189 people have died in the fireworks factory explosions in Tamil Nadu. While the skill training for workers of the fireworks factories has been mandatory for the renewal of licences, there has been callousness on the part of the factory management leading to such back-to-back tragic incidents.
In an order, Virudhunagar District Collector VP Jayaseelan has directed all the foremen, supervisors and workers of the fireworks factories of the district to undergo mandatory training.
The collector has directed that notice will be served to a factory to send its employees for a one week free intensive skill training. If the factory management does not comply with the order, a second one would be served and the company will have to pay a fine of Rs 5000.
An amount of Rs 10,000 would be levied as fine if the company does not respond to a third notice. The licence of a company could be revoked if it does not respond to a fourth notice.