House panel suggests Epidemic Act’s review

NEW DELHI: The parliamentary panel on home affairs, in its deliberations on the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic in the country, said there is need to revisit the provisions of the Epidemic Act, 1897; advised prudence in the approval of vaccines; and admitted that micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) have been among the businesses hit the hardest by the pandemic and the lockdown.

“The Committee observes that the provisions of the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, have helped in managing Covid-19, but this Act is outdated as it was framed in the colonial-era, well before the Spanish flu of 1918,” the panel has said in its report, contents of which have been reviewed by HT. “Therefore… the Act should be revisited, updated and amended so that it is fully equipped to respond to the challenges posed by the unanticipated onset of a pandemic or epidemic in the future.” The panel does note that the Act is already under review by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

The panel is one of two Parliamentary committees that will submit a report on the Covid-19 crisis. It has also pushed for a comprehensive public health act, with suitable legal provisions, to ensure checks and balances over private hospitals to keep them from selling hospital beds; and black marketing of medicines.

The Centre implemented the

Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) Ordinance 2020 to allow the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 in order to provide protection to health care service personnel, their living premises as well as their workplaces against any violence during the course of a pandemic. The move came in the wake of attacks on health care personnel after the onset of the pandemic.

“There are parts of the Epidemic Act that can suppress civil liberty and lead to invasion of a person’s privacy,” said Dr Sumit Ray, Head of Department (Critical Care Medicine), at Holy Family Hospital in Delhi. “So far, as profiteering should be limited, that’s a good thing. But how it’s implemented will need to be seen. There is also the concern that the government may not be held accountable for actions done under the guise of this Act.”

The panel also weighed in on the large-scale exodus of migrant workers to their homes in the hinterland after the businesses downed shutters during the lockdown. It also recommended a revision of the InterState Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Services) Act to address the deficiencies and lapses that came to the fore during the exodus. It also advised the creation of a migrant workers’ database to enable the extension of relief measures and delivery of rations .

The panel noted that the lockdown led to a “severe social and economic fallout.” In its report, which will be tabled in the next session of Parliament, it states that the MSME sector has been one of the worst affected. The sector, according to the report, did not have access to “low-cost institutional finance” leading to a lack of cashflow, demand, manpower, technology-based production activity and reduced working capital which resulted in stress on employment. “Stressed sectors are in dire need of working capital to to sustain the impact of Covid-19,” states the report. “The Committee further observes that MSMEs may also seek new avenues and possibilities for expansion by customising products...” Some of this credit-access issue has been addressed in the Aatmanirbhar Bharat package announced in May. The finance ministry on 13 September said banks sanctioned loans worth over ₹1.63 lakh crore to more than 42 lakh business units under the ₹3 lakh crore Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme for the MSME sector hit by Covid and lockdowns. The scheme is the biggest fiscal component of the ₹20-lakh crore Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan package. It also noted that a number of central schemes introduced for farmers and non-farm MSMEs, such as the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package, Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana and monetary and liquidity measures taken by RBI, need better ground-level implementation.

It stressed that the emergency authorisation of any vaccine should be done in the rarest of rare cases, as no emergency use authorization has been given in the past by the Central Drugs