Workers in the information technology and associated sectors can work from home until the year-end in view of prevailing COVID situations. "In view of the ongoing concerns due to Covid-19, the department has decided to further extend these relaxations upto December 31, 2020," the Department of Telecommunications said in a notification.
The exemption was going to expire at the end of July. The industry has welcomed the move. "Thanks @DoT_India for extending of relaxations in the Terms and Conditions for Other Service Providers #OSP in the wake of #Coronavirus (COVID-19) concerns to facilitate WFH till 31.12.2020," tweeted Nasscom.
"Thank u @rsprasad and Secretary @DoT_India for your strong support for Indian IT. This will ensure business continuity and employee safety... and also increase our talent pool to tier 2 and 3 cities," said Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh in a tweet.
Wipro chairman Rishad Premji also took to the micro-blogging platform to cheer the news. "Thank you to the government for their tremendous support on the new ways of working from day 1. This has helped tremendously in further elevating our standing and responsiveness globally," he tweeted.
The move comes even as the IT industry has been asking the government to make legislative changes so that employees can work from home.
In March, the DoT relaxed certain norms for other service providers (OSPs) to facilitate work from home amid the coronavirus pandemic. This included exemptions in requirement of security deposit and agreement for WFH facility for OSPs (primarily IT and IT-enabled services companies). Earlier, companies were not allowed to connect office Virtual Private Network to home infrastructure, a rule that was subsequently relaxed in view of the coronavirus pandemic.
Currently, over 90 per cent of the IT workforce is working from home and only those performing critical functions are going to offices.
