Chennai: The State had the maximum number of factory workers in the country with 42 percent of the workers in the over 39,000 industries being women, Chief Minister M K Stalin said on Saturday while inaugurating a Rs 706.50 crore exclusive hostel facility to accommodate 18,720 women workers of the multi-national company FOXCONN at the Vallam Vadagal Industrial Park in Kanchipuram district on Saturday.
Speaking on the occasion, Stalin said that the DMK government aspired to make the State the number one economy not in the country but in south Asia by encouraging industrial growth and also listed out the schemes his government had come up with for the development of women, including the ‘WE SAFE’ project that trained school girls with the help of World Bank to make them entrepreneurs.
He also explained the entire gamut of women-oriented schemes that his government had launched after coming to power and said the ‘Sipcot Mega Housing Project’ that he launched on Sunday as the first of its kind facility as a model for the country.
Already Sipcot had already constructed three hostels, at Irungattukottai, Sriperumbudur and in Neruperichal in Tiruppur district before joining hands with FOXCONN for the present one, he said
Congratulating the chairman of FOXCONN, Young Liu, who was present at the event, for winning the Padma Bhushan, Stalin said that the company had two units in Sriperumbudur. What was launched with an investment of Rs 2000 crore now employed 41,000 workers and 35,000 of them were women, he said.
The DMK government wanted more industries that alone can increase job opportunities and also develop the economy, he said and explained the several schemes aimed at promoting industrial growth all over the State, one of them was to ensure that every district had an industrial park.
Of the various other path breaking schemes was one on creating a land bank of 45,000 acres, for which 41,000 acres of land had been identified and 12,500 acres had been added to the SIPCOT land bank, he said.
The government was committed to achieving its goal of turning the State into a ‘US $ One Trillion Economy’ by 2030 by attracting enough investments into the State and called up the support of companies like FOXCONN to realize the dream.
Handing over the keys to a few women who had been given the accommodation in the 22.48 lakh square feet housing complex set up in 20 acres of land, he asked them all to treat the facility as their own home and maintain it properly.
