Govt relaxes workplace norms for firms allowed to operate during lockdown

Firms to earmark quarantine facilities and ensure all employees download the government's contact tracing mobile application

In what may come as a relief to industries, the government has watered down a host of stringent workplace norms in its recent order extending the national lockdown for the next two weeks starting May 4, while making it mandatory for employers to send employees symptomatic to the Ccovid-19 to a medical facility and ensuring that workers download the official contract tracing mobile application.

To start with, the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) have removed a clause wherein medical insurance for all workers was made mandatory. The previous MHA order, which had permitted economic activities from