India’s leading manufacturer of Earthmoving and Construction Equipment today announced a special COVID relief package for its employees. April onwards, over 2,000 JCB India employees and their families have been vaccinated at camps held across its Ballabgarh, Pune & Jaipur facilities. It is now ensuring that all its employees in India are vaccinated over the next few weeks.
Between April and May, as the second wave spread, JCB also saw a surge in COVID cases in its factories. JCB was one of the first to take the hard stance of temporarily pausing all manufacturing operations to stop the spread of the virus. Multiple COVID Control Rooms were set up to monitor COVID-19 positive cases. The company also extended a Telemedicine facility for all its employees in different parts of the country. Over 7,600 tests were conducted during this phase and in addition to managing Beds, Oxygen and Ambulances, JCB created a COVID relief centre on its factory premises.
Speaking at the occasion, Deepak Shetty, CEO and Managing Director said “The past few weeks have been a phase of intense learning. Virtually all our organisational resources were deployed towards supporting the health and safety of our employees and their families. Unfortunately, we also went through the painful phase of losing some of our colleagues to the virus. We are fully committed to supporting their families through a relief package.”
Apart from the Term Insurance policy benefits, JCB India will be supporting the education of the children of deceased employees to the tune of Rs. One Lakh per child, per year for their schooling and Rs. Two Lakhs per child, per year for three years for their Graduation. The medical insurance for their families has also been extended to 10 years. For contractual employees, there will be one-time support of Rs. Three Lakhs.
Additionally, the CSR Arm of JCB India has been working closely with School children, Self Help groups and Artisan groups that it supports. It helped School children with unique Education and Nutrition Boxes during COVID related school closures. And for the many Self Help groups and Artisan groups, it will continue to enhance their income during this difficult period. Through Vaccination Camps, Oxygen concentrators, Medical and ICU beds, JCB India will continue its engagement in the Community that it has been supporting for over two decades.
“From a Business standpoint, while we started the year on a strong note, expectedly we saw a disruption to the business cycle in May. We are hopeful of a strong recovery towards the second half of the year. However, right now it is all about how soon can we vaccinate all our employees and their families, and scale up operations in a safe and sustainable manner” he said.
