Apple’s biggest supplier Foxconn may increase workforce at India plant by four times

Apple’s biggest supplier Foxconn seems to be betting big on India. According to a report in news agency Reuters, the Taiwan-based original equipment maker is planning to quadruple the workforce at its iPhone factory in India over two years. The report quotes two government officials with knowledge of the matter. The report says that the production disruptions at the company’s plants in China due to the country’s strict Covid rules is the reason.

Recently, videos that showed thousands of people holding suitcases walking along the city streets and highways of Zhengzhou in China went viral on the internet. Reports say that they were workers from Foxconn who were fleeing the company’s compound. The videos that went viral showed some scale barbed-wire fences to escape; others walked miles to get home. The employees are said to be escaping from the “closed loop” system induced by China’s Zero Covid policy, in which they are asked to sleep, live, and work within a designated area isolated from the outside world.