Maruti: Staff in Suzuki Motor to stay in Japan

The Wall Street Journal (New Delhi) - Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. Wednesday said all its 150 employees in Japan are staying back to continue their projects with parent Suzuki Motor Corp., although they have been given the option to return home.

"Everything is fine. Most of our projects are on schedule," S.Y. Siddiqui, managing executive officer for human resources at Maruti Suzuki, told Dow Jones Newswires. "Things are improving and now two to three senior guys [from Maruti] are also over there."

Maruti, India's largest car maker by sales, Saturday sent a team of senior executives to Suzuki to evaluate the situation after the devastating earthquake and tsunami, which also triggered a nuclear crisis in Japan.

Suzuki Motor has said it plans to temporarily run vehicle assembly output lines and some parts production in Japan on Tuesday and Wednesday and will decide later on the output schedules from Thursday.

Maruti, which currently has about 8,000 employees, plans to hire another 1,500 in the financial year that starts April 1, Siddiqui said.

He said most of the hiring will be for a new factory at Manesar in the northern state of Haryana and to expand the marketing and sales team as well as for research and development.

Maruti has one factory each at Manesar and Gurgaon in Haryana. The company is building two more plants at Manesar.