Coronavirus: L&T pledges to protect livelihood of contract labour
Though the exact number of contract labour is not known, the major has employed them at its 500 projects, as per sources.
"We employ a huge amount of contract labour who are totally dependent on us for their daily livelihood. It is important for us to protect them at this point of time from the vagaries of work and to ensure that daily needs are provided at both, the essential worksites and their place of stay," said L&T CEO and Managing Director S N Subrahmanyan.
In a video message to employees, Subrahmanyan said extra vigil should be put across the labour camps of the project sites to ensure that proper hygiene, food, removal of waste, cleanliness including social distancing is maintained and managed.
Urging its workforce to look at coronavirus, he said "how we deal with this collectively and collaboratively will be the way as we also look to take ourselves forward."
Stressing that in every crisis, there is an opportunity, the MD said resilience, discipline and at the same time, imagination, innovative ability have to be played out.
"Most important is compassion for others, especially the elderly who seem to be more vulnerable, taking care of each others including our workforce, smaller vendors, sub-contractors and others who are dependent on our ecosystem," he said.
"Determination to do one's duty against all odds is the stuff that L&T-ites are made of and I am sure in the testing times ahead, we will be capable of taking up these challenges and will have the opportunity to demonstrate our mettle," he said.
Urging employees to exercise restraint at the time of pandemic of this magnitude, Subrahmanyan also urged employees to open mind to new learnings.
"The technology that has been implanted in many of our projects should come to the fore now. Using heat sensing cameras to detect people with illness, looking at gatherings, people spitting, and such should be traced and appropriately counselled," he said.
Using the labour app (WISA) to inform on the nature of Corona Virus, its symptoms, testing facilities available locally as well as preventive measures can be propagated and that is being done in English, Hindi and other vernacular languages, he added.
"As L&T, we play an important role in the country"s manufacturing and infrastructure economy, he said and added "We also have a serious role to play from an IT services point of view as we maintain certain crucial Infrastructure and facilities for our clients that are essential services."
He added: "Whether we work from offices, sites or home, it should be normal. Extensive use of mobiles, laptops are the forms of communication to be resorted to without disturbing the atmosphere around us and ensure that we continue with our work as is required with necessary inputs." NAM MKJ