Transportation of workers no hurdle yet but may cost more post lockdown

“As of now, our plant production has been stopped. We are planning to ferry the workers on buses. We are following government guidelines and would start operations next week. Regarding the transportation, we have enough bus operators on standby and it wouldn’t increase our expenditure since only minimum workers would be brought to the plant,” said an official in Renault Nissan, Chennai.

Even though the government has relaxed the norms for private companies to operate with minimum capacity, manufacturing units would take time to get back to normal since many workers have left the city for their hometown, the official added.

“Our call centre employees can work from home since our projects are mostly insurance companies based in the United States. We are not planning to open our office for another month,” said an HR official in the city.

Speaking to DT Next, IT professionals said that work from home would be the norm for another three months and in some cases, employees who are working in large applications which need better configurations were asked to come to the office.

“My manager has been collecting the addresses of employees who are staying in the city and planning to arrange buses. But the plan has not materialised,” said B Gobi, an IT professional.

Inside the Greater Chennai Police limit, IT and its enabled service firms can operate with 10 per cent employees. Special economic zones and export units were allowed with 25 per cent workforce. In the rest of the State, IT and the related services, SEZ and export units could operate with 50 per cent workforce. The government guidelines have also strictly mentioned the need to disinfect industrial premises, wearing of masks and social distancing among other regulations.