The workers of a Chinese smartphone manufacturing facility in Noida restored to violence on Thursday. According to The Hindu, around 200 workers were sent on forced leave without any prior notice causing a huge commotion.

Sacked without being informed

A total of 1200 people worked at the Hipad Technology India, which is responsible for the manufacturing of Xiaomi and Oppo phones. On being sent on leave suddenly, the workers started protesting. The commotion got so heated that they started throwing stones and tried to barge into the facility in sector 63.

Miscommunication which led to commotion

According to the Labour Department officials, there had been some miscommunication from the company’s side. According to them, the company has asked the vendors to inform the workers to not to come to work from Monday as there was a shortage of raw material.The management stopped them from punching in the bio-metric attendance for that day. According to the assisting Labour commissioner Harish Chandra Singh, the workers refused to leave the premises saying that they had not been informed about this beforehand by anyone. Meanwhile, the representatives of Oppo have commented on the issue saying that the organization in question and its workers are independent entities and not related to Oppo in anyway. “India has a deep respect for our employees and have always held them in the highest of regards. We have and will continue to take decisions keeping in mind the best interest of our employees.”, the authorities told India Today.

Pointing out the miscommunication, in a statement, Hipad Technology said it had informed the vendor who had provided them with the labourers that the supply of materials had been delayed by 10 days after Diwali because of transportation problems. “To prevent loss of employees in the key positions, Hipad India had arranged for human resources department and the vendor’s company to carry out a joint training,” it added. Hipad Tecnologies further said that they had informed the vendors that they would ask the labourers to return to factory and work, as reported by Scroll.

One of the security guards at the unit described the day the riot started. According to him, the workers went inside by 8:30 am andby 9:45 am more than 1000 workers gathered outside the main building and started protesting. He also claims that several employees took mobile phones and other gadgets from the building.

Four persons arrested for vandalism

Police were deployed at the scene as the issue started getting uncontrollable for the people of the facility. Senior officers including the superintendent of police, Noida city, Sudha Singh reached the scene to assess the situation. Singh said the police were alerted about the violence under Phase 3 police station limits at 10 am and they were quick to respond. She also said that there was no official complaint lodged by the facility till afternoon, even as police were probing the facts. According to one of the police officers, four people have been picked up for questioning about this violence.

Also Read: Kisan Mukti March: Thousands Of Farmers In Delhi To Demand Relief From Unending Agrarian Crisis