Tedious e-pass norms, lack of public transport make it a crawl to work Curbs On Travel Among Dists Hit Staff Availability

Tedious e-pass norms, lack of public transport make it a crawl to work

Curbs On Travel Among Dists Hit Staff Availability

Sindhu Hariharan & Mamtha Asokan | TNN

4.8.2020

It’s two steps forward and one back for companies which want to bring back their employees to work. While the services sector appears to have embraced WFH, manufacturing units, particularly those on the outskirts, are facing issues with a tedious e-pass system and the lack of public transport.

Tamil Nadu scrapped the zonal system of boundary demarcation whereby the state was divided into eight zones. “When Chennai and its adjoining areas were one zone, there was no need for e-pass. But that has been scrapped and we have gone back to boundaries by district borders, making it cumbersome and tedious for e-pass procurement,” said the head of a trade body.

Consultancy firm IndiaFilings, which currently has about 100 staff working at its office in Chennai, prefers WFH. “If we apply e-pass for employees on behalf of the company, the approval rate is high. If they apply individually, it’s low,” Lionel Charles, CEO of IndiaFilings, said.

TOI spoke to several company officials and most said only employees living within the city limits and having their own vehicles are able to report to work while those who depend on public transport are not able to.

SECO Controls, an MSME based out of the Perungudi Industrial Estate, said the absence of public transport has hit movement of people. Vaishnavi Vignesh Raja, its VP, said the company is helping staff living outside Chennai limits get epasses to come in to work, but there are a few employees who have been trying to get e-passes and are not able to secure them.

A senior official at the state industries department told TOI that companies have been granted e-passes for inter-district movement of staff earlier and they can continue to apply.

However, in industrial hubs like Coimbatore, where most staff stay in districts outside the city limits, businesses continue to get affected due to curbs on inter-district movement. “Rules must be modified such that an authorization letter from respective companies along with employee identification cards support inter-district movement,” R Ramamurthy, president, The Coimbatore District Small Industries Association, (CODISSIA) said.

Meanwhile, Chennai’s tech companies have embraced the work-from-anywhere model with the product firms like Freshworks, OrangeScape, Chargebee and others also hinting that they will remain remote till the end of the year.

Cognizant has decided to keep its corporate and sales offices closed through the end of 2020. “We are deciding on the reopening of delivery centres based on the local Covid-19 situation and restrictions, client needs and center requirements,” a spokesperson for Cognizant said.

Verizon said they plan to continue the 100% WFH implementation that is currently underway. GAVS Technologies, a software product company on OMR, has made all arrangements to accommodate increased staff but said lack of public transport has led to just around 5% employees coming in. “There is a huge amount of social anxiety about the virus, and we are also not forcing people to come in as we are okay continuing operations remotely,” Balaji Uppili, chief customer success officer, GAVS, said.

A MUST: Police cracked down on those travelling without e-passes during the lockdown