No international flights to enter India for 7 days
States to enforce work-from-home for pvt sector staff, except essential services
nNEW DELHI: The government on Thursday banned all international commercial flights from landing in India for a week starting March 22 and instructed states to enforce a work-fromhome protocol for all private sector employees, except essential services, as part of a raft of measures aimed at staving off the coronavirus epidemic that has claimed four lives in the country.
In an advisory, the Centre also advised children below 10 and citizens above 65 — except government servants, medical professionals and public representatives — to stay at home and not “venture out”.
“States are being requested to enforce work from home for private sector employees except for those working in emergency/ essential services,” the statement read. The statement came hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation on Thursday evening.
The decision was taken after a meeting of the group of ministers (GOM) formed to monitor the outbreak, which included civil aviation minister Hardeep Puri, health minister Harsh Vardhan and external affairs minister S Jaishankar. Officials at the national aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation
(DGCA), said about 300 incoming flights will be affected.
The government also suspended all concessional travel on trains and flights, except for students, patients and the disabled. The national transporter at present provides a total of 53 categories of concessions of which only 15 categories can be availed of as per the new order.
All group B and C central government employees have been asked to attend office on alternate weeks, with staggered timings.
The DGCA had earlier prohibited travel of passengers from the European Union, the European
Free Trade Association, Turkey, and United Kingdom from March 18 till March 31. India also issued an order expanding compulsory quarantine for a minimum period of 14 days for passengers coming from or transiting through the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait.
“Amid the worldwide outbreak of Covid-19 virus and increasing number of cases in India, it has become imperative to curtail its spread and protect the most vulnerable groups, i.e people with chronic illness and senior citizens. Withdrawal of such concessions is also a part of a wider plan to discourage unnecessary travel by all concerned and hence concessional booking of tickets have been withdrawn except for patients, students and the disabled, for both unreserved and reserved segments,” the railway ministry said.
The Railways have seen a decline of Rs 454 crore in its earnings over the last week as at least 164 trains were cancelled in the wake of the coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak. India is currently grappling with stage 2 of the virus outbreak, with 169 cases and four deaths due to local transmission. The Indian Council of Medical Research has ruled out community transmission, or stage 3 — where the origin of the infection is not known — as of Thursday morning.