Kerala state government has become one of the first Indian states to revoke the work-from-home option for certain categories of their employees.
The government had given the work-from-home option to certain categories of employees, including pregnant employees, women employees with children younger than two years, employees with children suffering from mental and physical issues as well as employees suffering from cancer or other severe illnesses.
The state government had issued separate orders to expand the category of employees who could avail the work-from-home arrangement from the second week of January. However, now, the latest order issued by the Disaster Management Department clearly renders the earlier concessions given through the earlier orders null and void.
The decision to do away with the remote work option is a direct result of the decline in the daily count of COVID cases that the state has been witnessing recently.
Initially, the state government had rolled out the work-from-home option for all categories when the first two waves of the pandemic had struck. Later, however, it limited allowing the remote work option to only a few select categories of employees.
The number of active cases in Kerala has dropped to 66,018 with only six per cent of them in hospitals. This is a significant drop, as during 9 to 15 February, the average active cases were 1,86,638.
