The Evening Wrap Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. We hope you are staying home and staying safe. Here are the big stories that you need to follow today. Gas Leak in Vizag At least 10 persons, including a six-year-old girl, have died and hundreds were admitted to hospital following the leakage of a poisonous gas from a chemical plant in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, this morning. The gas leak occurred at the LG Polymers Plant between 2.30 am and 3 am. The toxic gas spread over a radius of three km, affecting at least five villages, including R.R. Venkatapuram, Padmapuram, B.C. Colony and Kamparapalem. Some reports said around 800 people were taken to hospitals. According to PTI, nearly 250 were undergoing treatment, with 20 of them on ventilator support. We have a live page tracking the developments on this story, as well as some explainers. Styrene, the gas that leaked from the plant, is a poisonous, inflammable gas used in the plastics industry to make products such as disposable cups and containers. When inhaled, it can affect the central nervous system, and cause nauseas, headache, loss of balance, and a burning sensation in the eyes. However, so far, no studies have reported deaths from short-term exposure to styrene gas. Hence, it is not clear if the deaths were caused by styrene alone or a combination of chemicals. In another development, more than eight workers were injured when a boiler exploded at a Neyveli Lignite Corporation thermal power station in Tamil Nadu’s Cuddalore district. Reports suggest that the explosion could have been caused by overheating. Trains for migrant workers Two updates on the movement of migrant labour back to their home states. First, the Karnataka government has taken a u-turn and decided to resume special train services for migrant workers stranded in the state. The government had cancelled all the trains on Tuesday after leading property developers expressed concern over the exodus of labourers. Second, The Hindu’s political editor Nistula Hebbar reports that the Chief Ministers of Punjab, Karnataka, Haryana and Gujarat have now dialled their U.P. counterpart Yogi Adityanath to assure him that migrants workers from U.P. would be properly taken care of, and that they needn’t return to U.P. Uttar Pradesh had been the first State to announce the provision of buses and other means to bring back its migrant labour stranded in other States as the lockdown took effect. The Chief Ministers are worried that economic revival in their States, post lockdown, would be hampered if all the migrant labour return to their home states. Covid Watch: Numbers and Developments The number of coronavirus cases in India stands at 54,280 at the time of publishing this newsletter, with the death toll at 1,832. Tamil Nadu’s Covid-19 tally has crossed 5,000, while Kerala recorded no new cases for the second consecutive day. The Indian Navy’s INS Jalashwa has reached the Male port in Maldives to evacuate Indian citizens stranded there. Air India has also opened bookings for Indians stranded abroad. Longer working hours in M.P. The Madhya Pradesh government has increased the working hours in factories from eight to 12. It has also allowed up to 72 hours in overtime, in a move that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan claimed was “pro-worker and investment friendly”. “The increased working hours are applicable only if employees are willing to work. And they must be paid for overtime,” Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said. He also added that newly opened industrial units will be exempted from the requirement of keeping registers and inspections. Further, industries can change shifts at their convenience. New industries will be exempted from all Sections of the Factories Act, 1948, except for Sections 6, 7, 8, 21-41 (H), 59, 67, 68, 79, 88 and 112. “...we have relaxed the Sections for three months and proposed to the Centre to extend the relaxation for 1,000 days,” Chouhan said in a live video address from Bhopal. Kerala quarantine regulations The Kerala government has clarified that persons seeking to enter Kerala from red zone localities in other regions in the country would have to go into institutional quarantine for a mandatory period of 14 days. During this time they would have to pay for their food and lodging. The government had earlier insisted that returnees from other States in the country, including red zones, need to sequester themselves in a government facility only for seven days. Officials clarified that the prevalence of Covid-19 infections in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Maharashtra had necessitated the shift in the containment strategy. In brief: All visas for foreign nationals and the OCI card-based visa-free travel for Indian-origin people remain suspended till the restrictions on international travel to and from India are in place, said the Indian embassy in Washington. However, all foreign nationals in the country whose visas have expired and who are unable to travel out of India can apply for their visa extension without any additional fee, it said in a statement. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has approved a proposal for the abolition of 9,304 posts in the Military Engineering Service (MES), the Defence Ministry said on Wednesday. This is in line with the recommendations of Lt. Gen. D.B. Shekatkar (Retd.) Committee, which had suggested measures to enhance combat capability and rebalance defence expenditure of the armed forces. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. |
Post a Comment