Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Wednesday announced that public transport will resume in the State on an "experimental basis" with a limited number of buses plying on select routes from Friday.
As his Government looks to ease coronavirus lockdown restrictions to spur economic and other activities, Khattar made it clear that the state will not lower its guard and not hesitate in imposing stricter curbs if things don't go as planned.
He also said as the Centre has now revised guidelines pertaining to activities in red, green and orange zone, the state government will formulate district-specific policy to boost economic activities. On resuming public transport, which has been shut since the lockdown was announced on March 25, Khattar said, "Local state transport, we are starting from Friday on an experimental basis."
"Like, we will run a few buses on Panchkula, Ambala, Sirsa, Mahendragarh, Narnaul routes..," he told a press conference through video conferencing on Wednesday evening.
The Chief Minister expressed hope that about 50 thousand MSME units in the State would get a benefit of approximately Rs. 3000 crore after the announcement made by Union Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman for earmarking an amount of Rs. 3 lakh crore as collateral-free loan for MSMEs in the first phase of economic package.
He said this is the first phase of the economic package for MSMEs and the Central Government would share more information with the states in the days to come.
Slamming the opposition for raising eye brows over procurement of Wheat and Mustard, the Chief Minister said that they are highlighting the issue unnecessarily.
The Chief Minister said that industrial and economic activities are being re-started in a phased manner after the lockdown as per the guidelines issued by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
He said that the State Government has also made arrangements to send migrant labourers back to their native states. So far, about one lakh migrants have been sent through special trains and buses. He said that before sending migrant labourers to their home states, it is very necessary to get permission from their respective home states, and only after that arrangements are made to send migrant labourers.
He said the Central Government has informed that the definition of containment zone has been changed and now the area of containment would be smaller while activities would be started in rest of the areas so that people can return to work while following the norms of social distancing along with other precautions. He said that teams have been constituted for formulating district centric scheme to combat the spread of COVID-19.