Industry lags behind in providing relief to the people during pandemic in Gautam Buddh Nagar
Ten News Network
Gautam Buddh Nagar is often touted as the show window of Uttar Pradesh. Thanks to presence of a very large amount of industries – both IT and otherwise, the city has got a unique and special identity on the national map.
However, what’s surprising is that despite such well laid infrastructure and many of these industries, not much efforts were made to use them for Covid-19 relief. Industries that employee hundreds and thousands of people as workforce, also didn’t made any credible effort to help their own employees.
While there are many IT parks in the city, with some of them boosting of thousands of acres of land area, none such multinational came forward to offer their facilities to administration for Covid relief. Even for some industries willing to setup such facilities, the bureaucracy didn’t prove to be of much help, according to concerned people.
Only exception in the city has been IT company Tech Mahindra, that had collaborated with Fortis to convert its office cafeteria into a Covid care facility.
There are 40 beds at the cafeteria, of which 35 are occupied. The facility is not, however, equipped to handle critical patients. It has basic medical infrastructure to help patients with mild infection recuperate in case they can’t get a hospital bed. It has been operational since April 24.
A Tech Mahindra spokesperson told media, “Initially, we created this facility to help our employees and their family members, but we did not restrict ourselves and have accommodated anyone who reached out to us as information spread. We have a basic setup in place, to help people isolate and recuperate. Fortis doctors are on call and there is manageable oxygen support. It is a very small number, but we wanted to do something for emergency support.”
Indeed, there are some companies in SEZ that wanted to replicate the same model but reportedly couldn’t do it due to administrative hurdles.
We want to come forward and help create more such facilities. For that, we want permission. We have requested the administration,” said Ajay Goel, president of the Noida Special Economic Zone Welfare Association.
