PESHAWAR, Feb 20: Thousands of industrial workers and skilled labourers lost their jobs due to closing down of over 640 units out of a total of 1970 registered industrial concerns the NWFP has, according to official sources.

Set up with a total capital investment of over Rs60bn, the 1970 registered industrial concerns, involving a large variety of manufacturing medium and small units, provided employment to well over 57,000 industrial workers and labourers.

“Thousands of the once employed industrial work force presently stand jobless due to the closure of so many manufacturing units in various parts of the province,” said a senior civil officer in the provincial bureaucracy.

Federal and provincial governments’ failure to keep industrial pace, recorded in the last decade of the last century, not only undermined several of the sub-sectors hampering overall industrial growth, in the NWFP, all the more it left thousands of workers in the lurch, particularly in the Gadoonamanzai area in the Swabi district.

The province, according to information collected from the industries department, NWFP, the number of industrial employees in the province recorded considerable increase during the last 50 years rising from just 1063 in 1947 to over 57,000 in 2000.

With the industrial sector recording marginal growth during the last 50 years, the number of people employed in the NWFP’s industrial sector rose from 1063 in 1947 to over 11,000 in 1960, over 20,000 in 1970, over 26,000 in 1980, over 41,000 in 1990 and over 57,000 during the last decade of the last century.