Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited, the corporate entity of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, will allow its non-executives to work from home.
It has issued a circular asking the heads of departments to prepare lists of non-executives who can be asked to work from home. It will allow not more than 50% to work from home and at any given point of time depending on the exigency they should be ready to reach office.
Those placed in essential services like operations and production will not be included in the list for work from home. The permission is being accorded to work from home due to the situation caused by COVID-19 and the directives issued by the government will be reviewed at an appropriate time.
Before the lockdown declared by the State government, Brandix India Apparel City, Atchutapuram, became the first industrial cluster to declare closure of all its units till March 31.
IT and IT enabled services firms registered with the Software Technology Parks of India have already been advised by its Joint Director M.P. Dubey to permit employees as far as possible to work from home.
This is for the first time that employees of VSP are being allowed to work from home though in IT employees in Visakhapatnam working without attending office is allowed very often.
RINL recognised union president J. Ayodharam and Visakha Steel Employees’ Congress general secretary Mantri Rajasekhar welcomed the decision to all most of the non-executives to work from home.
In the circular, RINL clarified that work from home was allowed with immediate effect and it would remain in force till April 4. As per the government guidelines the time period would be either advanced or extended. As the work from home facility was being implemented temporarily to stem COVID-19, the same could not be claimed as a matter of right, the circular stated.
Mr. Ayodhyaram and Mr. Rajasekhar said after declaration lockdown, the management should allow even those employees who were drafted for essential services. A total of 30,000 non-executives and contract workers work in the VSP.
