Toyota Kirloskar Motor has announced that it is to commence preparatory operations at its 310,000 units per annum manufacturing plant in Bidadi, Karnataka.

As per a statement issued by the company, Naveen Soni, Senior Vice-President, (Sales & Services), Toyota Kirloskar Motor, said: "We thank the government for the permission granted to the industries in rural areas to start operations. As a responsible corporate, TKM places highest priority to the safety and well-being of our employees and other stakeholders and will continue working in concurrence with the State and Central Government’s directives. TKM intends to restart operations at the earliest. With the inputs from various stakeholders, including the government agencies, we have released a detailed 'Restart Manual'.

"The challenge that lies ahead of us is the fact that for the auto sector to start production, it is necessary that our entire value chain starts operating. Our value chain consists not only of our suppliers but our dealers as well who are based in different parts of the country including cities that are still under severe lockdown.

"However, basis the latest directive issued by the government, TKM has decided to initiate restart of some preparatory operations at the plant beginning 5^th May, 2020. These preparatory operations are conducted to provide our workforce with an adequately safe environment to work in, duly prioritising domains like spare parts supply as that is an important requirement from the markets where certain customer service activity has already started. Furthermore, we have developed certain crucial changes in guidelines for enhanced safe operations in all areas of work which would mean that the first few days will be spent on training our members on the new guidelines as well as ensuring safe materials and working environment. Hence, operations at our plant will resume in a phased manner, most importantly keeping in mind the needs of ‘social distancing’ and sanitisation.”