Rabale reels under flood fury

The 600 small scale units at Rabale are yet to recover from the effects of last Tuesday's flooding. Many are still coming to grips with the damage inflicted by the unprecedented downpour: Walls that collapsed under the impact of the water, submerged machinery and stocks and lost export opportunities.

While the bigger plants, with the exception of the IPCL plant in Rabale, escaped the fury of the monsoon, the smaller ones, mostly by the hills that run along the Thane-Belapur Road, bore the brunt of the floods.

At least 100 units have been affected by Tuesday's rains and the consequent flooding, said K R Gopi, chairman of the core action committee, Small Scale Entrepreneur's Association, TTC.

"The units are still assessing the exact extent of the damage, but it could be as much as Rs 100 crore just from loss of stock and machinery," said Gopi. "This does not take into account the man-hours or export opportunities lost," he said.

Added Mahesh Kudav of Vishveshvara Enterprises, "There is another issue. Most of our labour is daily wage and if we cannot take them back in full strength soon, we will lose them to other units elsewhere."

Mahesh's company manufactures respiratory masks and lost an entire export consignment of 2,20,000 pieces meant for a US-based buyer.

"It will take us at least a month to get back to the prescribed standards of hygiene and start manufacturing again," said Mahesh.

Mahesh further said that he expected a loss of around Rs 40 lakh from ruined stock alone. And a similar amount from loss of man-hours.

The story was repeated throughout Rabale. At Miranda Automation Private Ltd, makers of automated biscuit-making machines, flood waters reached to over five feet, submerging machinery and all related electrical circuitry. Albert Miranda, managing director, said, "It will take us at least two to three weeks to get back on the production line. Meanwhile what do we tell our customers? Telling them that our plant is under water would ruin our reputation."

Miranda too is looking at losses in the region of Rs 40-50 lakh. He now has to reinstall all his electrical circuitry before the machines can be started.

While Rabale faced the fury of the floods, neighbouring Pawne, Turbha and Mhape escaped. The reason, say the industrialist of Rabale, is the indiscriminate parcelling out of plots by the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation.

K R Churi, president of the SSI association, said, "MIDC has been allotting new plots indiscriminately without making any arrangements for proper drainage, etc."

In the last one year, the patch of high land and hill that separated the industrial plots from the hill itself was blasted away to make way for more plots. As a result, there is no place for the water to run off and it came straight into the estate."

MIDC officials were not available for comment.