NEW DELHI, Apr 17:
With an aim to mitigate the hardships of rural part of the country, the Centre today exempted certain construction activities, harvesting of minor forest produce (MFP) and non banking financial companies in rural areas which has been badly hit by the ongoing lockdown in wake of COVID-19 outbreak.
As per the new order, construction activities in rural areas to include water supply and sanitation, laying and erection of power transmission lines and laying of telecom optical fiber and cable along with related activities have been exempted from the lockdown.
The exemption also allowed activities such as collection, harvesting and processing of Minor Forest Produce (MFP), Non-timber Forest Produce (NTFP) by Scheduled Tribes and other forest dwellers in forest areas have been exempted from the ongoing lockdown.
The bamboo, coconut, arecanut, cocoa, spices plantations and their harvesting, processing, packaging, sale and marketing have also been kept out from the restrictions.
Centre has also allowed the non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) including Housing Finance Companies (HFCs) and Micro Finance Companies (NBFC–MFIs), with bare minimum staff.
In a Demi-Official (DO) letter written to all States and Union Territories (UTs) Government, the Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla asked them to implement these exemptions as their earliest.
The Centre has been trying address the hardships of the rural sector and many relaxations were given in the first phase of the lockdown to boost the rural economy and to mitigates the hardships of the rural India which has been badly hit by the ongoing lockdown. (UNI)
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