Micro, medium, and small enterprises (MSMEs) in the State have sought a helping hand from the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation in the wake of the nearly a month-long lockdown across India to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Industrialists appealed in separate memoranda to Labour Minister T.P. Ramakrishnan and Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment Santosh Kumar Gangawar for a direction from the governments to the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESI Corporation) “to pay the entire wages of the employees of the units that are covered under the ESI for the period our country is under the lockdown”.
The memoranda said that the MSMEs fully supported the drive by the governments to contain COVID-19.
Though it is not the time to think of the economic fallout of the shutdown, MSMEs are in “deep financial trouble”, they said.