Hinduja Group flagship company Ashok Leyland has offered Voluntary Retirement service for 500 senior officials as on November 30, a top official said Wednesday.
“Roughly 500 executives were offered VRS (Voluntary Retirement Scheme) on November 30, representing about 10 percent of the executives…,” Ashok Leyland MD Vinod K Dasari told reporters here, at the sidelines of the conference SIMCOMVEC — the eighth edition of SAEIndia International Mobility Conference and first Commercial Vehicle Engineering Congress.
The commercial vehicle major, last month announced the VRS scheme for its employees as part of the plans to cut manpower costs in the wake of continued slowdown.
“While the company maintained market share in the last quarter, volume pressures continue and we need to take some definite steps to manage the slowdown. The VRS package will be fair and would provide adequate compensation to any employee who opts for it”, Dasari had said earlier.
Elaborating about the scheme, Dasari today said, the company has undertaken a restructuring exercise and has moved some employees from manufacturing to the marketing and sales department.
“We have moved 50 workers from manufacturing to sales and are planning to move around 300 people to sales. But this is not a permanent initiative…,” he said.
Responding to a query about the launch of its latest commercial vehicle ‘Boss’, he said it was a “overnight success” and the market share grew to 40 percent in the ICV (intermediate commercial vehicle) segment from the existing 12 percent.
He said the company was “enhancing” the dealer network and was investing more and more in quality.
Ashok Leyland had reported 27.06 percent decline in its sales for November 2013 at 5,375 units. The company had sold 7,370 units during the same month of previous year.
The company witnessed a 39.49 percent fall in commercial vehicle sales at 2,715 units last month from 4,487 units sold in November 2012.
Earlier at the inauguration, Dasari demanded the need for a clear road map on Auto Fuel Policy.
“The need for cleaner and greener technologies is increasingly an imperative, as we battle rising fuel bills, trade deficits, and poor ambient air quality in urban India. The new Auto Fuel Policy needs to lay down a road map for emissions and alternate fuels,” he said.
Such a road map with the right incentives will help the industry channelise its investments and enhance the pace of innovation, he said.
“In all the aspects of developing safer, greener and smarter commercial vehicles, I see two important issues. One is choosing a roadmap of technologies that are priority for our country and second is innovating to provide affordable technological solutions to meet the regulations,” he said.
“The government and the industry will continue to work together and prioritise regulations for our country rather than simply follow western norms.
“While, Indian industry will continue to invest at a faster pace to find cost effective solutions and challenge engineers, to find solutions to some of the most daunting technical challenges,” he added.
PTI