CEOs of Indian companies seek COVID-19 vaccination for their employees to avoid lockdown

With significant scientific knowledge on the pandemic and with the vaccination programme in place, India should focus on protecting livelihoods along with lives in its fight against the pandemic, instead of going for partial lockdowns, said Solomon Pushparaj, Deputy Director and Head, Confederation of Indian Industry(CII), Visakhapatnam.

Referring to the CEOs poll on ‘Impact of lockdown on the industry’, conducted by the CII, he said that 710 CEOs from both manufacturing and services sectors, have responded to the poll questionnaire.

A vast majority (75%) of the respondents expressed the view that partial lockdown measures could impact the movement of labours as well as goods, which would significantly affect industrial production.

Chief executive officers of companies in India are against more lockdowns and are instead working with the government to vaccinate their employees, according to a survey conducted by the Confederation of Indian Industry.

The industry body polled 710 CEOs and senior leaders. They were split across manufacturing and service sectors and 68% were from small firms.

ITC would certainly like to extend the vaccination to employees… “We have approached vaccine manufactures and are in exploratory talks,” said Amitav Mukherji, head of corporate HR

India is currently using AstraZeneca vaccine, which is being produced in India by the Serum Institute, and a government-backed alternative developed by Bharat Biotech.

Tata Steel said it would get employees inoculated as soon as shots are available commercially.
Factories are recovering from one of the world’s strictest lockdown last year, which led to large-scale job losses and migration of workers back to their villages.

India has seen a resurgence in coronavirus infections in recent weeks, reporting a daily record of more than 150,000 cases. Hospitals are on the brink of being overwhelmed and preventive vaccines and curative medicines are running out. The new wave has pushed Maharashtra the most industrialized state that accounts for almost 15% of national output to shut all non-essential businesses and order offices to work from home through April.