MUMBAI :
Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd’s Chairman Anand Mahindra On Fr said that the Mahindra Group will immediately begin work to explore how its manufacturing facilities can make ventilators to cope with growing need for the life saving and critical care equipment as the number of Covid 19 positive cases continue to increase at an alarming rate across the country.
The Mahindra group which has also presence in the hospitality sector and owns, Mahindra Holidays a network of holiday resorts has also offered to convert some of those into temporary quarantine facilities, as authorities expect more cases to be detected as testing facilities increase.
“We need to create scores of temporary hospitals and we have a scarcity of ventilators. To help in the response of this unprecedented threat, we at the Mahindra Group will immediately begin work on how our manufacturing facilities can make ventilators,” Mahindra said in a series of tweets on Sunday.
In addition, he also said that the Mahindra Foundation, the group’s Corporate Social Responsibility ( CSR) arm, would create a fund to assist the hardest hit stakeholders in the value chain including small businesses and the self-employed individuals. “I will contribute 100% of my salary to it and will add more over the next few months,” Mahindra said on twitter adding that he would encourage associates to make voluntary contribution to the said fund.“I urge all our various businesses to also set aside contributions for those who are the hardest hit in their ecosystems,” he added.
Mahindra warned that it is highly likely that India is already in stage 3 of transmission of covid-19 virus, which could lead to an exponential rise in the number of casualties.
“Cases could rise exponentially with millions of casualties, putting a huge strain on medical infrastructure,” he said, adding that a lockdown over the next few weeks will help flatten the growing curve of the fast spreading pandemic and moderate the peak pressure on medical care.
Anand Mahindra’s announcement comes close on the heels of an appeal by British government which has reached out to big manufacturers including carmakers such as Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls-Royce, Ford and Honda among others to figure production of ventilators to avoid Italy-like situation.
In a similar initiative, Anil Agarwal said on Sunday that he will commit 100 crore fund towards fighting the pandemic. The fund will create three specific areas – livelihood of the daily wage worker, employees and contract workers, preventive health care and will provide timely help to communities in and around various plant locations of the company.“The world is currently putting up a spirited fighting against Covid-19. It is critical that corporate houses should assist the government in the fight against this deadly virus… This fund is a first step on Vedanta’s behalf and we will increase the corpus if the need arises,” said Agarwal.
As part of other measures, Vedanta will not cut salaries or fire any staff, including temporary workers during this crisis period.It has also decided to provide special, one time insurance to cover Vedanta’s employees and their families against Covid-19.
Further, all mobile health vans in operational areas will aid in preventive healthcare and each business unit will contribute towards the livelihood of daily wage earners around plant locations like tea sellers and vegetable vendors.
Last week Friday Chairman Tata Sons Pvt Ltd Natarajan Chandrasekaran appealed to the group companies to ensure complete payments to their temporary workers and daily wage earners for the months of March and April even if they fail to report for work due to precautionary measures including quarantine steps and site closures.”The current situation is likely to have a large and deep financial impact on the weaker socio- economic segments of our society,” he said in a statement while announcing the measure.
