COVID-19 lockdown: DPIIT flags a long list of industries that need to open

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has flagged a long list of industries that need to open soon in a letter to the Home Ministry.

“It is felt that certain more activities with reasonable safeguards should be allowed once a final decision regarding extension and the nature of lockdown has been taken by central government,” DPIIT Secretary Guruprasad Mohapatra told Home Affairs Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla in the April 11 letter.

With industry bodies increasingly becoming impatient at the ongoing lockdown and confusion over another two-week extension, the letter batted for the reopening of manufacturing units in a long list of sectors. It also pointed out that the new list of activities being pushed by the DPIIT ‘are essential to improve the economic activity and provide liquidity in the hands of the people’.

The letter, reviewed by Business Standard, also suggested that corporates and major manufacturing units may be allowed to run at 20-25 percent of employee capacity in a single shift.

This is for sectors such as textiles, automobiles and electronic manufacturing.

DPIIT also said only businesses that ensure a single entry point of workers, space for social distancing, separate transport for ferrying workers or necessary accommodations, along with regular sanitization of the premises will be eligible for remaining open.

―Business Standard