New Delhi: Employees may have to gear up to spend more time in office as the Centre is working on an ordinance to increase the work hours to 12 hours per day from eight hours. This seems to be the immediate impact of the coronavirus lockdown as the government is looking to address the issue of labour shortage and facilitate companies to maintain social distancing.
According to the report in Economic Times, the ordinance will give state governments the flexibility to increase the work hours of employees across establishments. It will be brought by the labour ministry to enforce the Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (OSH&WC) that empowers states or 'appropriate authority' to notify work hours, the report quoted its top sources as saying.
The Economic Times report further stated that the employers' organisations and industry have requested the government to increase the work hours as it would help them address the problem of labour shortage post lockdown as migrant labour have gone back and may not join back work immediately.
The 21-day coronavirus lockdown, which was to expire on Tuesday, was extended till May 3 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The prime minister added that some relaxations may be allowed after April 20 in places where there are no hotspots.
The catastrophic effect of the lockdown on the overall economy and livelihoods of migrant and daily wage workers triggered severe concerns following which a number of chief ministers in their video conference with Modi on Saturday sought some kind of relaxation for a number of sectors.
Several union ministers resumed work from their respective offices from Monday as part of government's plan to revive economic activities.
The government in an order last week had also asked all officers of the joint secretary level and above to be present in the ministries along with one-third of the essential staff from Monday.
Comments
0 comment