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India Today
3 hours ago
- Automotive
- India Today
Crushed fingers: Why worker injuries in India remain undercounted?
Accidents are bound to happen. But if they can be prevented, should they still be called accidents?This was the underlying theme of the report CRUSHED, released recently by the Delhi-NCR-based nonprofit Safe In India Foundation (SII), which analysed injuries in the supply chains of the top 10 auto the widespread nature of the problem, productivity losses related to occupational safety and health (OSH) issues cost India a whopping Rs 12.5 lakh crore annually, or almost 4.2 per cent of the national GDP, estimates injuries—common in the automotive sector and often resulting in workers losing their fingers from working in the power press—increased from 334 in 2019 to 866 in 2022, reaching an all-time high of 1,256 in 2024. These incidents, usually wherein workers lose their fingers and a hand in rare cases, were reported to SII through its worker assistance centres in the Gurugram-Manesar-Faridabad region of Haryana and Pune, Maharashtra. Almost 98 per cent of the injured workers assisted by SII were from the supply chains of Maruti Suzuki (32 per cent), Honda (16 per cent), Hero (15 per cent), Tata Motors (15 per cent), Mahindra (15 per cent) and Bajaj (5 per cent) in Haryana and Kumar, a worker who suffered a crush injury on his right hand, shared that most injuries occur towards the end of shifts when the pressure to meet quotas intensifies. 'If a worker has not completed their assigned quota within the standard eight hours, they are forced to speed up their work pace, which significantly increases the risk of accidents and injuries,' he also said contractors frequently present untrained helpers as machine operators. Factory supervisors, instead of verifying their skills, allow these helpers to operate hazardous machines, often resulting in serious injuries.V.N. Saroja, head of safety at SII, explained that most of these injuries could have been prevented. In a staggering 91 per cent of the cases, supervisors had ignored workers' red flags about faulty machines. In fact, 94 per cent of the injuries occurred on machines with no sensors. Poor maintenance was another major cause—50 per cent of workers reported that machines were only inspected after an injury or the case of Kanchan Sharma, who suffered a crush injury on her left hand in March 2024, mainly because she was not informed that the machine's key had a tendency to get stuck. 'During my work, the key jammed, causing the machine to descend unexpectedly and injure my hand. The die setter, supervisor and management already knew this issue existed, yet no one warned me,' she added that what is glaring is the underreporting of accidents, despite a legal requirement to report all workplace injuries to the respective state government's labour department and to maintain an accident register. In 2022, only 48 accidents were officially reported in Haryana while SII assisted 1,053 injured workers that year—over 20 times the official all factories employing more than 10 workers (or 20 in some states) fall under the Employees' State Insurance (ESI) Act, 1948, under which employers must provide social security to workers earning less than Rs 21,000 per month. However, the report found that over 1,085 injured workers received their ESIC e-Pehchaan cards only after their accident and only 684 had it before the Jain, a lawyer, pointed out that when it comes to quality, automobile brands (original equipment manufacturers, OEMs) go as deep into the supply chain as needed. 'If such involvement is possible for quality, it's equally possible for worker safety,' he adds that it's a legal obligation of the employer under international law, Supreme Court rulings and high court judgments. 'If OEMs exert quality control over deeper tiers of their supply chains, the responsibility and liability for worker safety also extend to those levels.'Lalit Jain, a former Maruti Suzuki executive, said that it's also a mindset problem wherein safety is seen as a cost. 'Some Tier 1, 2 and 3 suppliers have realised that safety is an investment, not a cost. Many still view safety equipment, sensors and guards as expenses that eat into profit. This outdated mindset remains common in Indian industry,' he to India Today Magazine- EndsMust Watch
Deccan Herald
2 days ago
- Deccan Herald
The missing safeguards in India's workplaces
Three recent events symbolise workers' plight due to a lack of safety at India's workplaces. On June 30, in Telangana's worst industrial mishap, 46 people died, eight are still in hospital, and another eight are still missing, some possibly charred beyond recognition. This human tragedy in an industrial area was caused by the explosion of a reactor in a chemical plant, heard several kilometres away. To call it an accident absolves the management of the neglect of proper maintenance or not adhering to safety protocols. In the same Sangareddy district, 25 workers died within four months in 2024. The cases of injuries or near-fatal cases that have not been reported can only be guessed. But Sangareddy is just an illustrative case, not an isolated one, across the June 7, in the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) area near Pirangut on the outskirts of Pune city, 18 workers were charred to death, 15 being women, in a deadly fire in a chemical factory. An investigation by some intrepid labour activists revealed that the workers were not even aware they were handling hazardous chemicals. They were marked by codes masking the true name of the chemicals. It was revealed that the women workers were paid less than minimum wage. The vulnerable are exploited, have job insecurity, and face the most unsafe and risky conditions. This company has been in operation since 2012, but got registered only in 2020. It also managed to obtain an ISO 9001 certification for quality management. No inspector ever visited the factory till this 'accident' happened. This cannot be attributed to the ease of doing business. While EODB has shifted the onus to self-certification on the owners and managers of factories, it surely does not mean complete abdication of inspection, especially of worker safety in hazardous industries. It is made worse by the management's greed and corner-cutting, like disabling safety sensors or running the presses at higher speeds to achieve sales third event is the launch of a report called 'Crushed'. This is India's only long-running, evidence-based report published by Safe In India (SII), an NGO dedicated to improving worker safety in India's manufacturing sector, particularly the automotive and auto-component industry, which accounts for one-third of the manufacturing sector's GDP. SII's work has increased worker awareness about the Employees' State Insurance (ESI) scheme and the ESIC role. Over the past seven years, SII has helped 10,000 workers access ESIC benefits, but this still represents only 40 per cent of the victims. In the last few years, the vendors to the top ten auto brands accounted for the crushed fingers of 2,333 workers. This work breaks the silence around injuries, showing its true scale with official statistics. It also throws up laughable instance, the source of data could be from two arms of the government, the labour ministry and the insurance corporation. In Haryana, routinely, the ministry reports the number of injuries around 40 to 50 per year for several years. But the ESIC claims benefits are going to nearly a thousand workers. And this is with only 40 per cent awareness among workers. It is clear that thousands of workers are getting killed or maimed across the automotive sector, and the official silence must be the Economic Survey of this year has highlighted the issue of workplace safety. It says that Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) regulations are not to be seen as burdensome expenses but as a strategic investment. The SII estimates that the country loses up to 4 per cent of GDP due to neglect of safety. India ranks a low 133 in global labour productivity, and this rank is directly correlated with inadequate OSH standards and poor working conditions. India's rank is significantly below China, Vietnam, and Mexico. Investment in safety and OSH protocols not only improves the life of the worker and her family but raises productivity and morale, and improves the trust between workers and management. For the factories, it reduces absenteeism, medical expenses, and penalties for and lesson from neighbouring Bangladesh is telling. In 2013, an eight-storey building housing garment factories collapsed in the Rana Plaza, killing 1,134 people. This shocking incident led to drastic changes, including the putting in place of the Accord on Fire and Building Safety, which led to the training of 1.4 million workers. It was certainly a factor that increased Bangladesh's garment sector competitiveness, and its exports outpaced even India and Vietnam. Even Chile and Costa Rica experienced strong labour productivity growth due to improved OSH standards and reduced occupational most ironic thing about the provision of workplace injury and death benefits or compensation is this. The ESI scheme was established by the ESI Act of 1948, the same year as the setting up of the National Health Scheme of the United Kingdom. Both aim to provide universal social security and healthcare (in the case of India, to workers, and in the UK, to all citizens). The present reality is that almost all UK citizens have access, and get benefits from the NHS, whereas for the ESI, many workers are not even aware of their rights and benefits. In design, the ESI is one of the world's finest schemes, but in implementation, it falls well way forward is clear. There should be complete transparency in data reporting on accidents and fatalities, making it consistent across ESIC and the Labour Department. Compliance to safety and OSH protocols must be incentive-based. There should be a Public Private Partnership (through NGOs if necessary) to increase worker awareness about rights and safety. Top brands must be made accountable for practices in their vendors, across the supply let us note that worker safety does not merely have an instrumental value but is ultimately a moral and ethical commitment too..(The writer is an economist; Syndicate: The Billion Press)
Mint
3 days ago
- Automotive
- Mint
In charts: Thousands of Indian auto workers are losing fingers to unsafe factories
More than 4,000 workers have reported injuries in Indian automotive supply chains since 2019, with around 80% these being loss of fingers, according to an annual report by Safe In India (SII) Foundation. The report, titled Crushed, covered 7,500 auto workers in Maharashtra and Haryana who have suffered non-fatal injuries since 2019 and sought SII's help to get benefits under the Employees' State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) benefits. ESIC is a government social security and health insurance scheme for registered workers, designed to protect them and their dependants from financial distress because of sickness, disability, maternity break, or death at work. SII's growing database aims to plug the data gap that exists over accidents and injuries in the industrial sector, but it is not a national-level dataset and does not reflect the pan-India trend. 'Crushed reports have covered Haryana since 2019 and Maharashtra since 2022, based on when our worker assistance centres were established there," said VN Saroja, head of worker safety at SII. Crushed injuries The latest edition of the survey said there were at least 875 injuries in automobile supply chains in 2024, and 69.7% of these were 'crushed injuries' (lost fingers). Crushed injuries have surpassed other types of injuries, though their share in overall non-fatal injuries documented by SII fell from 85.3% in 2019 to 69.7% last year, it said. Both Haryana and Maharashtra fared equally poorly on crush injuries. In Maharashtra, 80% of auto workers lost a body part at the workplace between 2022 and 2024, and 78% suffered a similar fate in Haryana from 2019 to 2024. The latest government data from the Directorate General Factory Advice Service and Labour Institutes shows there were 56.9 fatal injuries per million workers and 154 non-fatal injuries per million workers in 2023. Industry-wise data is not available. The reported said the typical injured worker is a migrant youth with a level of education. About 60% of injured workers assisted by SII had left their studies between Class V and X. In contrast, only 4% of injured workers had a graduate degree or diploma. About 87% of injured workers in Haryana were migrants, and 62% in Maharashtra. Disregard for safety Power press machines and the lack of proper safety equipment for workers are the primarily reasons for crushed injuries, the report said. Power press machines, 78% of crushed injuries last year, also cause more serious injury than other machines in auto factories, it said. Power presses are machines used to cut and give shape to metal sheets. 'Crushed injury in power press machines is more severe as it results in a greater number of finger losses in case of accident/malfunction," the report said. A lack of safety gear compounds the problem, SII said. More than 70% of the workers it said they were not given protective gear such as safety tongs, earplugs and protection Economic Survey 2024-25 had also highlighted the issue, noting India's manufacturing (11.4% of the total workforce) and construction (12%) workers were prone to workplace accidents.
Indian Express
5 days ago
- Automotive
- Indian Express
Workers in automotive industry face safety risk, as injuries rise 35 per cent YoY: Safe in India Foundation Report
Workers in the automotive industry continue to face safety risk, with a 35 per cent year-on-year increase in injured workers to 1,256 in 2024 as against 926 in 2023, a report released by Safe in India (SII) Foundation on Friday showed. Out of these, 875 workers reported crush injury (loss of their fingers) in 2024, a 15 per cent year-on-year rise from 759 crush injuries seen by workers assisted by the SII in 2023. More than 95 per cent of the injured workers assisted by it worked in 6 out of the top 10 automotive brands, it said. Supervisors often ignored workers' warning of malfunctioning machines, with 41 per cent injured workers aware of malfunctioning of the machines; of which 91 per cent reported to have informed the supervisor and were ignored, the report said. The Foundation's report, titled Crushed 2025, is the 7th annual report on worker safety in the Indian automotive manufacturing sector. Crush injuries tracked by the SII showed an increase and in two-thirds of these crush injuries on machines like power press, workers continue to lose two fingers on an average, the report said. More than two-thirds of power press defects that cause these grave injuries stem from loose or broken pins, keys, or springs, while one-quarter are due to damaged paddles, frequently resulting in double stroke injuries, the report said. Factories, predominantly, do not seem to have the practice of inspecting the machinery, daily before operations begin as required, it said. 'In 70 per cent of the cases, inspection of machinery is done only when not working or an impending external audit,' the report said. The higher the vulnerability of the worker in terms of lower levels of education, the worse is the rate of injuries suffered by the worker, it said. For instance, in Haryana, 59 per cent of the injured workers were non-permanent in 2024, while 86 per cent were inter-state migrants, with 77 per cent of the workers educated lower than class tenth. In Maharashtra, 77 per cent of the injured workers are non-permanent, while 80 per cent of the injured workers were inter-state migrants, with 74 per cent having education less than class tenth. While the report noted the changes proposed in the new Labour Codes, it said some of the rules, especially regarding working hours, have been changed in most states in line with the Codes, resulting in longer working hours without commensurate payments for overtime that often breaches weekly work hour limit. For instance, the legal working hours have been increased from 8 hours to 12 hours per day in many states but the weekly limit of 48 hours has not been increased. However, 'the reality is that 76 per cent injured workers stated that they work over 60 hours a week', the report said. Over 8,500 injured workers have come to SII, 78 per cent from auto-component factories, mostly on illegally operated power presses, Sandeep Sachdeva Co-Founder & CEO, Safe in India Foundation said. 'Women remain disproportionately at risk. Many employers falsify records and deny even basic ESIC (Employees' State Insurance Corporation) entitlements,' he said. As recommendations for improving workers' safety, Sachdeva said company boards should be made accountable for safety. 'Publish clear MIS on supply chain accidents; stop business with repeat offenders. Professionalise MSME suppliers, starting with Tiers 1 and 2, enforce ESIC and OSH (Occupational Safety, Health, and Working Conditions Code) compliance, align with global best practices,' he said. A joint task force can be created with the government and industry-wide skills and safety training programmes, especially on high-risk machines, should be launched, backed by honest audits. Aanchal Magazine is Senior Assistant Editor with The Indian Express and reports on the macro economy and fiscal policy, with a special focus on economic science, labour trends, taxation and revenue metrics. With over 13 years of newsroom experience, she has also reported in detail on macroeconomic data such as trends and policy actions related to inflation, GDP growth and fiscal arithmetic. Interested in the history of her homeland, Kashmir, she likes to read about its culture and tradition in her spare time, along with trying to map the journeys of displacement from there. ... Read More
The Hindu
04-07-2025
- Health
- The Hindu
Medical experts call for increased vaccination to tackle HPV-associated cancers
Medical professionals at a conclave in Coimbatore on Friday urged greater uptake of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to prevent cervical and other HPV-associated cancers. The awareness campaign was launched as part of a nationwide public health initiative led by the Serum Institute of India (SII). The panel comprised T.V. Chitra Bhat, Professor and Unit Head, PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (PSG IMS&R); K. Aarathy, MD, Manu Hospital; P. Senthil Kumar, Senior Assistant Professor, Neonatology, Coimbatore Medical College Hospital; A. Jayavardhana, Professor and Head, PSG IMS&R and N. Jayashree, Associate Professor, Cancer Institute, Adyar. The discussion was moderated by Nandhini Kumaran, Consultant, Masonic Hospital and Sri Ramakrishna Hospital. The experts highlighted the need to raise awareness among adolescents and parents and underscored the responsibility of healthcare providers in promoting preventive care. They pointed out that although a safe and effective vaccine is available, uptake remains low in India. 'HPV is not limited to cervical cancer alone. It is also associated with cancers of the vulva, vagina, anus, penis, and oropharynx, affecting both men and women,' said Dr. Senthil Kumar. 'With peak HPV infection occurring between ages 15 and 25, early awareness and timely preventive action are essential. With the availability of Cervavac, an affordable HPV vaccine developed in India, it has become easier to protect individuals from HPV-associated cancers.' During the conclave, the panel noted that India continues to face a high burden of HPV-related diseases, with cervical cancer being the second most common cancer among women. According to the ICO/IARC Information Centre on HPV and Cancer (2023), India reports over 1.23 lakh new cervical cancer cases and more than 77,000 related deaths annually. HPV is also linked to up to 90% of anal cancers and 63% of penile cancers, they said. The experts said limited public knowledge, stigma around discussing sexually transmitted infections, and the absence of routine vaccine recommendations in clinical settings are major reasons for the low coverage.
