-Working Peoples’ Charter Secretariat, dated 21st March, 2020   An open letter has been issued by civil society and trade union activists to the Finance Minister Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman, who is also heading the COVID-19 Economic Response Task Force. In that letter, a charter of demands has been put before the government to provide immediate relief to the working classes and the informal sector workers in the wake of COVID-19 outbreak in...

-The Indian Express For residents of many slum colonies situated across Mumbai it is not possible to put into practice any of the protective measures against COVID-19 prescribed by the WHO, including social distancing. On Thursday, The Indian Express reported that while there has been no evidence of community transmission in Maharashtra, the state has reported over 45 cases of coronavirus along with one death. Amid this outbreak, one piece of advice that...

-Hindustan Times Coronavirus in India: Adityanath had formed a high-level committee under the state finance minister Suresh Khanna, comprising agriculture and labour ministers, to decide the nature of the assistance to the labourers. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath said on Saturday lakhs of daily wage labourers and construction workers will be given Rs 1000 as the state remained under lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus outbreak. The state government had announced...

-Scroll.in With authorities shutting down key institutions in several cities, sputtering economy hurts the most vulnerable. On Friday afternoon, Bandra Terminus in suburban Mumbai seemed to be its usual bustling self. Scores of people lined up to buy themselves tickets to places in western and northern India. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except for the fact that many of the passengers had coverings around their faces: some wore construction masks, some...

-The Telegraph The large-scale unemployment the pandemic was set to cause would cost workers between $860 billion and $3.4 trillion in income losses Several workers’ organisations have demanded a special package to tide workers over the income slump entailed by coronavirus-induced social distancing and economic slowdown, at a time the International Labour Organisation has predicted a loss of 25 million jobs globally. An initial assessment by the ILO said the impact could be...