The funding will come through Srinivasan Services Trust (SST), the social arm of TVS Motor Company, and Sundaram-Clayton Ltd (SCL), and will include measures ranging from manufacturing and supplying supportive equipment such as masks to providing cooked meals to those in the frontline -- from healthcare workers to police officers, TVS Motor Co said in a statement.
The first phase of the program is underway and SST has supplied 10 tractors fitted with disinfectant spray along with about 30 personnel to the Hosur Municipal Corporation in Tamil Nadu, and municipalities in Krishnagiri and Mysuru, it added.
The streets and villages in and around these towns are being sprayed with disinfectant as an ongoing process.
SST will also manufacture and distribute 1 million face masks to those delivering essential services from healthcare to food supplies, it added.
Commenting on the initiative, TVS Motor Co Chairman Venu Srinivasan said, "This is an unprecedented crisis that requires all of us to cooperate and support each other as a nation. Our priority is to help the government efforts to contain and mitigate the effects of this pandemic."
"We will continue to do what we can for the community and people, as we have done in our 100-year history," he added.
TVS Motor Company and SCL are using canteen kitchens in Hosur, Padi (Chennai) and Mysuru to make cooked food which is being distributed to police, healthcare workers and essential services workers in and around Hosur, Chennai and Mysuru.
In Himachal Pradesh's Baddi, the company is distributing daily dry ration kits to daily wage workers who have been displaced, and also to villagers who need food supplies, it added.
"In addition, they are evaluating collaborations with 3D printing companies to make ventilators that will help support hospitals which lack the necessary life support systems to cope with patient care for COVID-19 victims," the company said.
TVS Motor Company and SCL have shut all offices and manufacturing facilities as per the guidelines.
The company said this is a difficult time for all stakeholders and it is exploring various methods to mitigate the financial duress. RKL RVK