The outbreak of COVID-19 is a major global crisis. The government is taking many proactive steps and precautionary measures to contain this threat in India. These are tough and uncertain times, and the nation needs our collective efforts. As our Hon’ble Prime Minister mentioned yesterday, resolution and restraint are important to combat this pandemic.

At the Tata Group, we have asked all of our companies to exercise extreme caution. The health and safety of our employees, their families and our suppliers, vendors and our larger ecosystem is of paramount importance. Our companies have largely enabled a ‘Work from Home’ (WFH) environment. We have asked our companies in India to rapidly and extensively adopt WFH to ensure that employees travel only in the most essential cases, excluding situations in which they are involved in the delivery of products and services for the larger public good.

The current situation is likely to have a large and deep financial impact on the weaker socio-economic segments of our society. During this time of crisis, our group companies commit to ensuring full payments to the temporary workers and daily wage earners who are working in our offices and at our sites in India for the month of March and April, 2020, even if these workers are not able to work due to either quarantine measures, site closures, plant shutdowns or other reasons.

The other segment of particular focus is the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) sector. Our group companies follow a policy of making timely payments of legitimate dues. Under the current situation, we will monitor this closely to ensure that such dues are paid on an immediate basis in order to provide liquidity.

Each day matters in our fight against this disease. With resolve, we can collectively overcome this crisis in a manner that is vigilant, careful and compassionate towards the needs of our fellow citizens.

N Chandrasekaran

Chairman, Tata Sons