Tamil Nadu govt offices to function with 50% workforce from May 18; work on Saturdays too

The Tamil Nadu government has released an order that the state government offices will start functioning with 50% of its workforce from May 18. They will be required to work for 6 days per week, including Saturdays. The state government is deciding the lockdown relaxations based on the recommendations of the medical expert committee formed by the government. The committee consisting of doctors, health department top officials and IAS officers will formulate and pass the recommendations to the CMO based on which the decision will be taken.

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Details of the order

Government offices were functioning with 33% of the workforce during the lockdown 3.0 period while it has been increased to 50% now. The government orders state various instructions to all the government offices starting from the Secretariat level staff to ground level workers to commissions, boards, corporations, universities, companies, institutions, and societies. 50% of staff will work on a rotational basis- the first batch will work on Monday and Tuesday, the other batch on Wednesday and Thursday, and the first batch will again work on Friday and Saturday and the same pattern will follow on.

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The government order also says that Saturdays will also be working days to compensate for the working hours which have been already lost. All the group A officers and the head of the offices will attend office for all the 6 days and other staff should also be available through any mode of electronic communication whenever required. The staff must be available for duty anytime required when the necessity arises apart from the above orders. 

These orders will be followed from the 18 May, which is the beginning of lockdown 4.0. However, school teachers working in government and government-aided schools have not been asked to work as of now since many of the schools are converted into temporary quarantine facilities by the government.

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