How telecom vendor’s are working during covid-19 in Nepal?

In Nepal ,like other countries there are many telecom vendors who have been an outsource companies of Nepal Telecom, Ncell and Smartel. They have been working round a clock to make the service uninterruptible. However, with rise in covid-19 cases, staffs working in such companies are also exposed to high risk.

There is not any exact number of covid-19 cases in the areas of telecom sector however it likely accounts large. And the counts will increase. One of the reason is they are directly exposed to environment. People working in Field Maintenance of telecom are on mandatory to visit the telecom towers to resume the service. They need to travel on the public transportation or on private vehicles to reach the site. During this, field personal are infected. Not only this, they too have compulsion to eat food in hotels which also increased the chance of having covid-19.

There are more than dozens of telecom vendors working in Nepal. As the telecom sectors is under necessary service, people working in such dozens of vendors are directly or indirectly gets attached with the environment. There are many people who have been working in vendor company like Huawei, ZTE, Genesis Nepal, Otech, gforce, etc. Those on vendors are on constant risk of getting covid-19.

Vendors laxity in care; focus in business:

Vendors management team have mere focus in the care and have big eye on business. They are tempted to up stair their position with the partner by providing the services despite of covid19 risk on their staff. The employee are on do or die situation and have pressure from their offices that they should do their job despite of risk. Many people even have left the job due to risk having faith that if wealth is lost everything is lost.

Likewise, despite of people working round a clock in field with risk, many vendors company neglect making the staff insured by insuring the covid-19 insurance. Also necessary health care utilities like hand sanitizer, good protective mask and PPE are also not provided. Without these health care utilities, staff are forced to work.

Work From Home- a possible option is becoming a mask:

We know, the work that can be done in office can also be done from home but despite this flexibility, many vendors want their staff to appear in their office premise and work. They want their staff at their office as they fear that output from home would be poor despite of corona effect. the staff need to commute to workstation and work which also increases the risk of covid-19 effect. However, some vendors are implementing work from home as possible to reduce the corona effect.

Directory body-NTA- is pretending to be awake

The main directory body for telecommunication in Nepal, NTA have not carried out strict rules and regulations in-order to reduce the covid-19 risk to the personal working in telecom field. NTA-Nepal Telecommunication Authority, can direct the telecom operators like Nepal Telecom, Ncell, Smartel and their vendors like Huawei, ZTE, CCS to monitor the staff health to reduce the covid-19 cases. But, we could not find any such direction issued by NTA to telecom and telecom vendors. When governing body is not acting boldly, how could staff working in vendors and their co-vendors could be safe?

At last, telecom being a necessity service, people working on such field should be assured of the safety. Also, the precautions should be strictly taken from vendors to their staff and if there is risk, work should be postponed.