Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday proposed “work near home” facilities with seamless high-bandwidth internet connection for Information Technology (IT) sector employees forced to work from home due to the pandemic.
He also suggested that companies create “work-sharing benches” to pool the resources of workers.
Revenue loss
The IT sector in Kerala had registered a revenue loss of ₹4,500 crore in the past three months. The Planning Commission had estimated that the industry would lose at least 26,000 direct and 80,000 indirect jobs in the next quarter.
The economic collapse in the aftermath of the global lockdown had run software start-ups and medium and small IT companies to financial ruin, the Chief Minister said.
The government would waive the rent of IT parks and prompt banks to infuse more funds to revive the sector.
Kerala had no option but to create a knowledge-based economy if it were to generate employment, produce wealth, power innovation and drive manufacturing in a precarious post-COVID-19 world, he said.
K-Fon project
The State would edge closer to the goal with the commissioning of the Kerala Fibre Optic Network (K-Fon) in December, he said.
The ₹1,500 crore Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board-funded project, which promised to provide high-speed internet access to the State’s population.
It would bring the internet free of charge to an estimated 20 lakh households below the poverty line.