Govt extends work from home option for IT, ITes till December 31 2020

New Delhi, July 22: The Department of Telecommunication has relaxed norms to facilitate work from home for IT firms until the end of 2020 owing to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

In its order, the DoT said, " in the view of ongoing concerns due to COVID-19, the department has decided to further extend this relaxation up to December 31, or until further orders, whichever is earlier."

It may be recalled that the relaxation was first granted till April 30 and then extended to July 31. The relaxation is for the Other Service Provider licence, which is necessary for companies to enable Work from Home. These relaxations will give companies enough room to extend the Work from Home for all their employees until the end of this year. As per the current state government orders, IT companies can operate anywhere between 30 per cent and 50 per cent capacity.

However in most of the IT firms less than 5 per cent of the employees are working from offices. Companies have shown no hurry to bring the employees back to work. Many companies have said that they do not see this scenario change until a vaccine has been found for COVID-19.

"Thank you to the government for their tremendous support on the new ways of working from day 1. This has helped tremendously in further elevating our standing and responsiveness globally," tweeted Rishad Premji, chairman of Wipro.

"Thank u @rsprasad n Secretary @DoT_India for your strong support for Indian IT. This will ensure business continuity n employee safety.. n also increase our talent pool to tier 2 n 3 cities," Debjani Ghosh, president of Nasscom said in a tweet.