SAIL’s Chairman, 39 Employees Test COVID-19 Positive

New Delhi: Around 40 employees of Steel Authority of India (SAIL) posted at the head office at Lodhi Road here have tested positive for coronavirus, reported Financial Express (FE).

Chairman Anil Kumar Chaudhary and an executive directors’ caucus have also contracted the virus.

“Barring two who are to be hospitalized, all others are asymptomatic and in home quarantine,” FE quoted a SAIL official as saying.

Around 450 employees, including chairman and senior executives of the company, work out of the head office, he further said.

SAIL has now come out with a number of SOPs for its employees. They have been prohibited from moving to floors other than their workplace and taking lunch together. The company has also tied-up with two renowned private hospitals to facilitate the testing of its employees.

The state-run steelmaker had kept its Lodhi Road office closed from June 3 only to resume on Monday, June 8.

Sources reportedly told the FE that very few employees are reporting to work following the spread of the disease.

In a June 3 statement, the PSU steel maker had reportedly informed about five of its employees contracting COVID-19 since the outbreak of the pandemic. Despite a government-appointed agency engaged to carry out extensive decontamination for two days starting June 3, the number of infected persons kept on increasing.

Meanwhile, SAIL’s director (personnel) Atul Srivastava died on June 10. SAIL, however, attributed his death to cardiac arrest.