Coronavirus: AITUC asks govt to provide financial aid to businesses, daily wagers during lockdown

New Delhi: A central trade union on Monday asked the government to provide financial assistance to compensate businesses and people, particularly daily wagers, during the complete lockdown in view of COVID-19 outbreak. The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) takes a serious note of the gloomy situation for several crores of workers who are migrant, contract, casual or daily earners to run their kitchens in the wake of lockdown in more than 75 districts resulting out of COVID- 19 spread, the union said in a statement. The central trade union pointed out that the address of the Prime Minister was too late and too little without any commitments on the part of the government for a necessary financial package, for necessary steps to be taken to give confidence to the people to allay their fears. [caption id=“attachment_4259677” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representaional image. Reuters[/caption] It stated, the government should have come out with financial assistance to working people and businesses in case of shut down to ensure job security and safe guard the poor, vulnerable needy sections of the society. “The migrant labour is worst hit, nothing to fall back upon. The financial package to them for the periods of lockdown is a must. There should be distribution of food packets and drinking water to all these worst-hit people during the lockdown,” it demanded. There is no specific help and guidelines for safety and security of those who are running the health services, financial, power, transport, water supply and sanitation services etc. Once again it is proved beyond doubt that it is the government sector and public sector infrastructure and services which come to the rescue of the population of the country in a disastrous situation and that the governments are supposed to increase their budgetary allocations in the social sector spending, it added. It is deplorable that the testing facilities are not sufficient if the cases start rising, the union alleged. In the case of COVID–19, the major attack comes on the respiratory system and ventilators are life saviours for them but there is a shortage in the country. Those who would be hard hit, not to meet a square meal need financial and food support from the government. All these are the areas Modi government should be seriously acting on, it said. The AITUC while standing with the frontline workers – employees of all essential services and those in the health sector doing their best for the populace in difficult times, demands from the central government to come out with necessary steps on these issues. They should also include to spell out allocation of disaster relief funds and medical aid strategy for all, recover NPA funds (bad loans) from corporate, the corporate under their Social responsibility should be made to pay to meet this challenge.