Export Processing zones in India

stringent. Over 62 % of the respondents indicate that labour laws are highly stringent. Around 90
percent of the respondents find it difficult to retrench labour and indicate that their performance
would improve with the introduction of the flexible labour laws. Declaration of the zones as
public utility service is considered very effective only by one third of the respondents. They
have however welcomed the recent move by the government to delegate labour commissioner’s
power to DCs. Over 60% of the respondents considered this move very effective. Only 17% of
the respondents feel that it was not effective.
Table 19: Labour laws : firms’ perspective (% of responses)
Highly Average Not stringent
How stringent are labour laws 62 27 11
How difficult it is to fire labour ? 11 43 46
Do you think that hire and fire policy will
10 30 59
help your business?
How effective has been the declaration of
13 51 36
the zones as public service utility
How effective has been the delegation of
L-commissioners powers to the DC
66 17 17
We also asked ‘ which labour laws are more constraining for their business. Majority of
them found all the labour laws constraining. However, the Factories’ Act and the Industrial
Dispute Act score over the others. Over 60% of the respondents feel that these two are major
Acts constraining their business.
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