17 companies asked to help meet 38mn unit PPE shortfall

NEW DELHI: How do you produce millions of coveralls (a key part of personal protective equipment or PPE) that health care workers need when dealing with something as infectious as the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), when, till last month, they were mostly imported ?

How do you do so, and quickly, when no one had a design specification till February 27?

For 17 firms that have been tasked with making the coveralls -- Hindustan Times spoke to six of them -- it is a race against time that involves dealing with raw material shortage, workers worried about their safety, and learning to quickly produce under the watchful and anxious eyes of the government.

And for the only laboratory that tests them, it simply means working around the clock.

It’s an experience that Tanmay Singhal, a recent graduate of OP Jindal School, didn’t anticipate in the first year of joining his father’s business. Their Haryana-based firm, Sai Synergy, was a supplier of fire protective gear that was used by oil rig workers in West Asia, till February. That’s when it received an SOS from the textile and health ministries of the Government of India. Director of Research and Development in the textiles ministry, Balram Kumar, reached out to the company to attend a meeting.

At the meeting, there were a handful of other companies; all had one thing in common: they worked with or made unwoven fabric (used to make the protective clothes).

The agenda of the meeting was simple: could these companies make PPEs?

“We were ready but it took some time and paperwork for the manufacturing to start,’’ said Singhal. The work started two weeks ago and, on a good day, when trucks aren’t stuck at the highway because of the lockdown, the unit produces 12,000 to 15,000 of these suits.