Around 40 employees of Steel Authority of India (SAIL), including its chairman and a clutch of executive directors who are posted in the company’s head office at Lodhi Road in New Delhi, have tested Covid-19 positive.
“Barring two who are to be hospitalised, all others are asymptomatic and are in home quarantine,” a SAIL official told FE. Around 450 employees, including chairman Anil Kumar Chaudhary and senior executives of the company, work out of the head office.
The state-run steelmaker had kept its Lodhi Road office closed from June 3 only to resume on Monday, June 8. Sources said, following the spread of the disease, very few employees are reporting to work. Texts message to all employees, not infected with the virus, from the chairman requesting them to report to work, also failed to break the ice.
In a June 3 statement, the PSU steel maker had said five of its employees had been found to be Covid-19 positive since the outbreak of the pandemic. It also said that the infected employees were immediately asked to home quarantine themselves.
Though the company had engaged a government-appointed agency to carry out extensive fumigation for two days starting with June 3, the number of infected persons only kept on increasing.
Meanwhile, SAIL’s director (personnel) Atul Srivastava died on June 10. SAIL attributed the death to cardiac arrest.
SAIL has now come out with a number of dos and don’ts for its employees. Their movement to floors other than their workplace has been strictly restricted. Taking lunch together has been also restricted. The company has also tied-up with two renowned private hospitals to facilitate testing of employees who require the same.
