Friday, March 29, 2024

IT employees demand withdrawal of Govt order allowing IT industry to function with 50% workforce

Forum for IT Employees (FITE), a Chennai based organization has raised serious concerns to the immediate attention on the central and state governments for allowing the IT industry to function with 50% of the workforce during the corona outbreak lockdown which is extended till May 3rd across the country.

On behalf of IT workers, FITE demanded the Ministry of Home Affairs withdraw the order of allowing the IT industry to function with 50% workforce and to declare forceful resignations of employees in bench/service are illegal.

“Most of the IT companies’ delivery centers are concentrated in few Metropolitan cities and Municipal Corporations in the country. Lakhs of inter-district and inter-state employees are working in the companies located in these few cities only. Now Most of the workers have gone to their home towns and started working from home after the announcement of the first lockdown started from March 25th. The industry is also functioning without much disturbance with working from the home facility as of now,” their statement reads.

French IT services firm Capgemini, which has 1.2 lakh of its over 2 lakh employees in India, Capgemini Technology Services India Limited has announced salary hikes and taken some extraordinary steps towards employee welfare in these tough times.

IT and ITeS providers can now work at 50 percent strength, according to guidelines issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs on Wednesday.

The Home Ministry order also mentions that the prohibition of public transports like buses, metro rails, and taxis (including auto-rickshaws and cycle rickshaws) and services of cab aggregators will continue which is contradictory to the first order. Following this, many companies bring it to the notice that they can’t provide vehicles to all employees. At least 80% of employees are using public transport, cabs, own vehicles and they are traveling to places far away from cities.

All the IT companies are working in centralized air-conditioned rooms which have all the possibilities of becoming the hotspot of coronavirus spread. The office bearers also said that most of the Metro cities and municipal corporations like Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Pune are in the coronavirus affected red zones.

“So, the order of ministry to allow IT Industry to function with 50% of workers is not advisable considering the scale of a pandemic. Moreover, the IT Industry is functioning without much disturbance for business with Work from home option during the lockdown. We also recommend that if the decision on allowing the operation of the IT industry is taken at the state/district level, the lockdown can be effectively implemented,” said FITE, the Indian non-partisan IT employees’ union based in Chennai.

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