MP Komatireddy Venkat Reddy wants telecom cos to allow employees to work from home

Hyderabad: Bhongir MP Komatireddy Venkat Reddy has written a letter to Union Minister for Communications Ravi Shankar Prasad urging the latter to issue a directive immediately that all companies allow their employees work from home without any restrictions and any existing regulations due to Covid-19 situation.

The MP stated that on March 13, the Department of Telecommunications temporarily relaxed regulations with regard to working from home for Other Service Providers (OSPs) in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The OSPs, include international call centres, BPO and KPO centres, medical transcription companies and other such entities.

However, he said, there is an old TRAI/DoT regulation mandating static IP connection from the employee's home and their company to connect the VPN.

There is a need to revisit the old policy in the present circumstances and do away with it completely.

The penalties for not following this are huge and will cause a lot of confusion and lead to decisions putting the employees' lives in danger by asking them to come to work.

"I sincerely believe it is the right thing to do so, especially on account of Covid-19 situation", he added.