Correspondent
Mumbai, Aug 19:
Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has decided to provide relaxation to employees by extending the “work from home” facility given to employees due to corona virus induced lock down till December 31, 2020
In a late-night tweet on Tuesday, DoT said the relaxation norms will be extended till December 31 and the employees can work from home till December 31, 2020. The earlier relaxations provided by the government, when India was locked down, was scheduled to end on July 31.
“DoT has further extended the relaxations in the terms and conditions for other service providers up to 31st December 2020 to facilitate work from home in view of the ongoing concern due to COVID-19,” the post read.
A complete lockdown was enforced in India on March 25, which was extended thrice. It was only in June that the government let almost all services resume. During the lockdown, companies tried new ways of remaining functional, with the government’s help. Earlier, the offices’ VPN networks weren’t allowed to be connected to a home infrastructure, but the government provided due relaxation.
According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), 90% of employees of all major IT companies are already working from home. Earlier this month, the body wrote to Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), a body set up by the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in 1991 to promote the IT sector, praying that some relaxations must be given permanently.
“While the current permissions have served the need well in the temporary context, the industry is now looking at enabling work from home on a permanent basis for a certain percentage of employees especially in the post-COVID-19 era,” NASSCOM wrote in the letter.
In March, the DoT relaxed certain norms for OSPs till April 30 to facilitate work from home (WFH) amid the coronavirus pandemic. This included exemptions in requirement of security deposit and agreement for WFH facility for OSPs (primarily IT and IT-enabled services companies). Earlier, companies were not allowed to connect office Virtual Private Network to home infrastructure, a rule that was subsequently relaxed in view of the coronavirus pandemic. This was later which further extended till July 31.0
