Ashok Leyland, which had introduced a voluntary retirement scheme and an employee separation scheme for its executives in August last year, has approved yet another VRS scheme this year.
In a notification, the company said its directors “approved the introduction of Voluntary Retirement Scheme (“VRS”) for all eligible employees” of the company.
The approval, it said, was given in a meeting on Nov 6, almost two weeks ago.
“The VRS will be implemented over a period of 9 months at the Company offices/factory locations. VRS upon implementation and execution will help optimize the capacity and resources of the company,” it said.
The maker of load-bearing vehicles and commercial people carriers such as buses had already been struggling with poor demand when it was further hit by the COVID-19 lock-down imposed in March this year.
It had announced two schemes, VRS and ESS, in August last year, pointing out that demand for commercial vehicles had dropped drastically over the preceding months, and production was a fraction of the company’s total capacity.
While the details of the new VRS scheme have not been released to the public yet, Ashok Leyland had offered of two month’s fixed pay for each completed year of service for employees with 15 years of tenure last time. For those who had completed between five and 10 years, it was offering 1 month of fixed pay.
The date of opening of the 2020 VRS scheme was not disclosed in the brief notice issued by the company to the public.
The company has been undergoing tremendous stress on account of lower sales for commercial vehicles this year.
For last month, the company saw a decline of 15% in the sales of medium and heavy commercial vehicles.
