In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, the Government announced in an advisory on March 24, that IT/ITES sector employees, who are involved in essential services, will be allowed to work from office. This is aimed at streamlining critical functions of IT-BPO companies, which include essential services, such as healthcare and banking.
The governments of states, such as Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Telangana have notified the essential nature of IT/ITES services in the policy itself. The advisory came from the Government after the Electronics and Information Technology Ministry received representations and suggestions from the IT/ITES industry, regarding permitting specific IT officials to work from office.
The industry is known to have been providing people with various essential services, such as government services, healthcare and insurance-related processing, provision and support of utility customers, maintenance and support of communication network, transportation-related logistics support, banking services, e-commerce services and delivery of essential items.
The advisory said that in order to deal with the crisis situation due to the coronavirus outbreak and lockdown imposed by various states, the employees who are termed as ‘mission critical’ by the top management of a company should be allowed to work from office.
According to The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY), “Reasonable time of three days may be given to persons, who will operate from home, to enable shifting of necessary equipment, computers, and so on, from office to home.”
