Company offers free hair care services for Covid fighters, journalists

Haircut for Covid fighters

Corporations have been coming up with innovative ways to keep themselves top of mind amid the Covid-19 crisis. While many are showcasing how much they care for the community by placing funds with the central and state governments including PM-Cares and then issuing press releases, a young company has made an interesting pitch. It has offered 300 free hair care services to frontline professionals, including those who donate above a certain amount to the PM-Cares fund. Those who are eligible for a free haircut also include journalists involved in on-ground reporting on coronavirus as well as police personnel.  

WhatsApp to the rescue

The Madhya Pradesh school education department is trying hard to keep students up-to-date during the nationwide lockdown. All schools in the state are closed, but the students are learning through WhatsApp groups, which have been created for the purpose. With the help of the Digital Learning Enhancement Programme (DigiLEP), the department has created more than 50,000 WhatsApp groups. Every day scores of handpicked educational videos by subject specialists are broadcast through these groups.

Focus on small businesses

After the daily wage earners, the other segment hit hard by the Covid-19 lockdown is small businesses, primarily family-owned and -operated enterprises with low capital and revenue. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh has so far identified nearly 3 million daily wage earners affected by the lockdown and provided a cash handout of Rs  1,000 to each. The government has now sought to placate small businesses by terming them the “backbone” of the state and seeking their support to make the lockdown successful through social distancing. In his video conference with the members of the UP BJP small business cell on Wednesday, the president of the UP unit, Swatantra Dev Singh, assured them the government would take steps to protect the interests of the small and medium businesses.