India’s leading technology, engineering, construction, manufacturing, and financial services conglomerate Larsen & Toubro, recently announced that it is committed to participating in corporate India’s response to COVID-19 through funds, community welfare plans and through leveraging its expertise to offer assistance. Responding to the call given by Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, the company will donate ₹150 Crore to the PM-CARES Fund.
The project management conglomerate has set aside an outlay of over ₹500 Crore per month to support about 160,000 contract workers by continuing to pay their wages during the ongoing lockdown and providing them with food and basic amenities at labor camps while maintaining the COVID-19 prevention and containment protocol.
Commenting on the company’s preparedness to fight this pandemic, Mr. AM Naik, Group Chairman, Larsen & Toubro, said: “L&T has always stood by the nation in its hour of need. We are helping India’s fight against COVID-19 by way of immediate funding and through a range of welfare initiatives including converting our training schools into Isolation Centers. We are also leveraging our engineering and construction expertise to help the authorities deal with the crisis.”
L&T is considering transforming all company-owned training centers and other select establishments into isolation wards. It is exploring to supply critical healthcare equipment to hospitals engaged in treating COVID-19 patients. The company has also committed to offering the use of its community Health & Medical Centers 24X7 and use ambulances to transport patients to the nearest hospitals.
L&T Smart World & Communication, a business unit of Larsen & Toubro, has installed smart technologies in over 20 major cities, including Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Prayagraj, Ahmedabad, Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad and others. These technologies will help various state governments and local authorities to fight COVID-19 pandemic effectively.
Here is a summary of other efforts undertaken by L&T in this fight against COVID-19:
Welfare Initiatives:
- Remitting timely wages to Workmen and Subcontractors despite the lockdown. Payment to the workmen being made directly to their linked bank accounts.
- Extra vigilance across the labor camps attached to project sites to ensure that proper hygiene, catering, waste management, cleanliness and preventive measures including social distancing is being rigorously maintained.
- 24X7 availability of Ambulances, Doctors and other Medical Facilities for medical assistance to workmen and employees across all locations.
- Use of mobile application (Workforce induction and Skills Application – WISA) to send SMS alerts, in English, Hindi and other vernacular languages, to workmen and employees on the nature of COVID-19, its symptoms, testing facilities available locally.
Employees Initiatives:
- Relaying various health advisories and related messaging to 1,20,000 employees, daily.
- Closure of all offices and other establishments as per the directives of the Government of India and various state governments / local authorities. Employees encouraged to work from home.
- Formation of COVID-19 Response Teams (CRT) across businesses to take timely action and Decision Response Team (DRT) at the corporate level to keep a constant vigil on the evolving situation and take necessary actions.
Meanwhile, in other news, the company has also decided to defer the extra salary revision – which was planned from March 1 till the end of July – due to business disruption caused by the COVID-19 lockdown.
According to a report by news websites moneycontrol.com, L&T has announced additional compensation covering eligible supervisory, executive and covenanted employees effective March 1, 2020. The extra salary revision was intended to cover a large section of its employees. L&T has 44,761 employees as per the FY19 annual report.
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