Lockdown: Adityanath asks for blueprint to restart industries after May 3

A day after attending Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s video conference with states’ chief ministers to discuss lockdown 2.0, which is slated to end on May 3, Uttar Pradesh CM Adityanath on Tuesday instructed officials to draft an action plan for restarting the industrial units thereafter.

On April 20, the state government had only allowed for conditional reopening of select industries in those districts, which had a low Covid-19 infection load.

The districts, which had more than 10 active Covid-19 cases, were not allowed any relief. As a result, industrial units in 19 UP districts, including all the big industrial hubs like Gautam Buddh Nagar (Noida), Agra, Lucknow, Kanpur, Ghaziabad, Moradabad, Firozabad, Rampur etc, are still closed.

“The CM has directed officials to prepare a roadmap to restart the industrial units in the state after May 3,” UP additional chief secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi told the media here this evening. Adityanath issued the directives at the high level review meeting with the heads of the UP Covid-19 response ‘Team 11’ officials here.

Currently, more than 7,400 industrial units, primarily those engaged in the manufacture of essential commodities such as medicines, medical supplies, food items etc and employing more than 133,000 workers are operational in the state, Awasthi said. Besides, 269 industrial units with continuous manufacturing processes are also operational.

“The government has also allowed for unhindered movement of construction material across the state, including bricks, sand, mortar, concrete, iron bars etc,” he said.

The three mega expressway projects - Purvanchal Expressway, Bundelkhand Expressway and Gorakhpur Link Expressway - which are collectively worth more than Rs 42,000 crore, have also started and currently employ over 11,000 workers.

“The UP Public Works Department (PWD) has started 225 road projects worth Rs 13,442 crore with more than 5,000 labourers on the job,” Awasthi said.

Meanwhile, various other government departments, including irrigation, minor irrigation, rural development, panchayati raj, housing etc have launched their stalled projects in the state to boost the rural economy and prepare for the coming monsoon season.

The government is preparing for the possible graded lifting of lockdown after May 3, especially in the green and orange zones.

The CM has ordered the sanitisation of all houses in UP's hotspots to preempt any spread of the infection in their vicinity.

All the stranded labourers arriving in UP are being medically screened and are being housed in special quarantine facilities. The state has estimated that almost a million migrant labourers stuck in other states will return to UP in the next 1-2 months due to the lockdown.

So far, UP has reported 2,043 coronavirus cases across 60 districts. Of these 400 have been cured and discharged, while 31 persons have succumbed to the disease, leaving 1,612 active Covid-19 cases.