Manpower shortage hits Aavin milk supply in western parts of city

Truck drivers say the crisis has been brewing for over a week now

Manpower shortage to load milk tubs at Aavin’s Ambattur dairy caused delay in supply to consumers in areas such as Anna Nagar, Ayanavaram, Vanagaram and Porur for the past few days.

On Saturday, vehicles left the dairy at 8 a.m. leading to milk being supplied to customers only after 10 a.m.  

Aavin supplies close to 14.50 lakh litres of milk a day to the city and the Ambattur dairy supplies around 4 lakh litres of milk a day. It has a capacity to process 5 lakh litres a day.

A milk truck driver said that the shortage had been building up for over a week now. “There is nobody to load the trucks and we are being asked to bring men to load the vehicles, which is not possible. Usually, a manpower contractor has tenders for deploying workers. However, the men were not coming in. Some say their arrears have not been settled, which is why they are not turning up for work. Others claim that their contractor is not paying them properly,” he said.

Another trucker claimed that the contractor had some clout in political circles and was not allowing other contractors to bring in additional manpower. “We hear that there were instances of names being listed simply without the persons actually showing up for work. The Chief Minister has been cleaning up many departments, we hope that he will take steps to ensure that Aavin functions well,” he said.  

S.A. Ponnusamy of the Tamil Nadu Milk Dealers’ Employees Welfare Association said that Aavin first supplied milk to its cardholders and then to retailers. “By the time we get milk, it is after 10 a.m. We are forced to do a second round to supply Aavin milk packets to shops and retailers after that. This leads to milk getting curdled and dealers losing money. We don’t know if we will be reimbursed for the losses incurred. It seems around 4,000 tubs of milk, which is 48,000 packets of milk, have been kept in Ambattur dairy since there are no workers to empty the tubs,” he said.