A joint council of micro, small and medium enterprises associations have come out with what they call ‘win-win formula’ seeking a set of measures from the Centre in order to help the small units pay the wages to their staff for the lockdown period.
Due to continued lockdown declared by both Central and State governments, MSMEs have been suffering for one-and-a-half-month as they are unable to have any production/sales on account of no work at the units.
Also, the banks are yet to implement the recently announced RBI guidelines, either the additional Working Capital of 10 per cent or the moratorium to be extended to all MSMEs. In fact, all banks across Tamil Nadu have auto-debited the March month EMI and none of the banks has come forward voluntarily to sanction the additional WC limits.
In such a situation, the entire MSME fraternity are finding it extremely difficult to disburse the wages for the lockdown period, as all their financial resources are completely dried up and many are left with no bank balance, to pay wages for April month.
Adhering to Prime Minister’s appeal, we have paid the entire salary for the month of March 2020, on humanitarian grounds, to help the employees, in spite of the sudden stoppage of activity, said presidents of Tanstia, Laghu Udyog Bharati – TN and Codissia in their appeal to the Prime Minister.
Given that the current Covid-19 is a war-like situation and also considering the tight financial situation of the Government and also with a humanitarian approach to take care of our employees, they jointly come out with win-win suggestions that would be acceptable for all stakeholders.
Wherever, workers are covered under ESIC, ESI Corporation should treat these employees as being on sick leave and pay the salary as per ESI rules. For all employees exempted from ESIC, the same rule shall be made applicable.
Declare ‘lay-off’ period
Otherwise, the Government shall declare the lockdown period as lay-off period, by which the employees are entitled to 50 per cent of their basic salary. For the above, a 25 per cent salary could be paid by the Government by creating an exclusive ‘Disaster Management Fund for MSMEs’ and the money could be released directly to employees. The remaining 25 per cent of basic salary shall be paid by the employers themselves.
For unorganised workers employed by micro and small Industries, Government should take a field study, based upon the filing of GST/ IT Returns/ power consumption, etc, and ₹6,000 per employee, per month shall be paid directly to the employees’ bank accounts (Central & State Government can share this Amount) or through DBT (direct benefit transfer) mode.