Telangana Govt eases out lockdown in rural areas

The State government has directed the District Collectors to ease out the lockdown norms and allow functioning of informal industries that will provide livelihood for the rural folks.

The government, however, also instructed the District Collectors to take decisions in this regard only after ensuring strict adherence to other lockdown norms like social distancing and adequate sanitisation like providing hand wash for the workers.

As per instructions issued over the last couple of days, the district collectors have been asked to take a decision after taking local conditions into consideration and allow operations at brick kilns, stone crushing units, rural repair workshops, beedi making, textiles (read looms), ginning mills and plastic industries among others. However, the government has said a strict no to liquor including toddy and also service sectors like salons.

“The instructions were part of an attempt to ease out lockdown norms and bring normalcy in rural areas. As majority of COVID-19 positive cases were recorded in urban areas and since they too started declining, it was decided to allow select informal industries to function in order to



allow those practicing traditional occupations earn their livelihood,” a district collector told.

Majority of the informal industries which would be allowed to function have minimal social contact and can be operated in small scale in addition to adherence to lockdown norms like maintaining social distance and also sanitisation. However, no exemptions were given to any of these industries located in urban areas including municipalities and municipal corporations.

“Operation of these industries where lot of migrant workers are also involved will discourage them from making any attempt to return to their native States. It will also help us estimate the impact of lifting the lockdown to some extent,” said another district collector.

Sources in the Chief Minister’s Office said the instructions were issued after Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao took stock of the situation on containment of coronavirus across the State. He took the decision following numerous requests and also ground-level reports from various parts of the State, to allow certain industries to commence their operations.