Cos voice concern over 'complete lockdowns' Wary of another lockdown due to a surge in Covid cases, manufacturing companies in Maharashtra have voiced their concerns against a complete shutdown. Instead, they want industrial workers to be vaccinated immediately to keep the units functioning – and prevent potential redundancies and output loss.About 5-7% of the workforce across plants in Nashik, Nanded, Aurangabad, Nagpur, and Pune were found infected in recent weeks, but manufacturers want factories to function, ruling out total lockdowns as an option in an environment where the pace of recovery still faces questions.After chief minister Uddhav Thackeray said the state needed to prepare for lockdown-like restrictions, Anand Mahindra, chairman of the Mahindra Group, recently tweeted to the CM that "the people a lockdown hurts the most are the poor, migrant workers and small industries."Mahindra further added that the "original lockdown was essentially to buy time to build hospital and health infrastructure. Let's focus on resurrecting that and avoiding mortality.”Several senior officials ET spoke with believe that the lockdowns are an artificial control."We should focus on the preventive spread and ensure vaccination of the workers as fast as possible.