HomeEconomy NewsIndia 21-day lockdown: Working on ensuring supply chains are not disrupted, says DPIIT Secy

India 21-day lockdown: Working on ensuring supply chains are not disrupted, says DPIIT Secy

pecific divisions which deal with these items like retail, internal trade, e-commerce – we are in constant touch with them. We are also in touch with the associations and the states, said Guruprasad Mohapatra, DPIIT Secretary.

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By Shereen Bhan  March 25, 2020, 2:20:51 PM IST (Published)

India 21-day lockdown: Working on ensuring supply chains are not disrupted, says DPIIT Secy
India is in the midst of 21-days national lockdown

that was announced by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi last night. There have been various advisories that the centre has sent out to the state government. State governments have been in their own versions of lockdowns and there are items under the exempt category that are permitted to continue operations to ensure that there is no supply disruption.

However, the problem is that the enforcement agencies on the ground are not necessarily taking those advisories forward. Guruprasad Mohapatra, secretary of Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) discussed this in detail said, “Considering the real seriousness of the COVID-19 virus, the PM has given a call for a massive lockdown of citizens wherever they are. A certain categories of exemptions have been given in the ministry of home affairs (MHA) guidelines. The sectors which are exempted are – food, pharmacy and fodder."

"We have told the states that there are people who will be working for home delivery. Those should be facilitated that if they can show an ID card given by their employer to the enforcement people, they should not be harassed. That is one. Two – there are supply chains, which are required to keep these stores and warehouses both of the organized retail as well as the e-commerce retail as well as individual pharmacy and vegetable and retail grocery units – we are also requesting the state that when they are enforcing this, they should keep this part also in mind and not that only the stores should remain open," said Mohapatra, adding that the stores will remain open only if these supply lines are taken care of. This might be the problem area but we are in touch with them and a lot of discussions are taking place both directly with the states and others. This is not the time to deal with non-essential, non-permitted items at all.

“I am sure within a day or two, it would stabilized. A lot of seriousness by the field officers have been shown to ensure that the lockdown is genuine and complete. Within a day or so this should improve,” he said in an interview with CNBC-TV18.

When asked what kind of provisioning would be done to ensure the inter-state travel of goods is not disrupted, he replied, “To keep the supply chain on for the permitted items has to be looked into. Those kind of movements, which are very essential to keep these permitted sectors under the MHA guidelines – we are looking into that.”

On procurement of components for manufacturing critical items like ventilators, he further mentioned, “The secretary of Department of Pharmaceuticals is coordinating about this. They have taken up the list of all the ventilator manufacturers and of the other critical items in the country and they are seeing how production can be ramped up, and there is a group of joint secretaries, which is also working on that. I am sure they should be able to ramp up the production and supply as per the requirement.”

“Specific divisions which deal with these items like retail, internal trade, e-commerce – we are in constant touch with them. We are also in touch with the associations and the states. So the implementation of this will happen in the state, so there will be a lot of focus from our side to take it up with the states and see that the genuine grievances as per the guidelines are resolved,” he added.