FOREWORD COVID-​19 HEROES TI COVID-​19 HEROES B&F COVID-​19 HEROES HCI

COVID-​19 HEROES PT&D COVID-​19 HEROES WET COVID-​19 HEROES RAILWAYS

COVID-​19 HEROES GEOSTRUCTURE COVID-​19 HEROES MMH COVID-​19 HEROES SWC

SNS’s — LOCKDOWN MUSINGS KALEIDOSCOPE AWARDS & RECOGNITION

SNS – MOST INFLUENTIAL LEADERS

“All construction came to a halt on March 22nd and we had several challenges to face like obtaining curfew passes or permits from the District Administration for restricted movement which was vital to provide basic essentials to our workmen and staff. We closely monitored the health of all at site and impressed upon the workmen to take all the necessary precautionary measures.”

The team strove to create and maintain a good and positive atmosphere at site and keep a high standard of hygiene. Another key consideration for the team was to retain the migrant labour so that they could start as soon as the lockdown was relaxed.

“Our good work has enabled us to resume operations on 21st April strictly following all the SOPs,” he states. “Our top management constantly motivated us through online meetings, always guiding us. The immediate allocation of the emergency COVID-​19 fund came in very useful to procure groceries, masks, sanitizers, soaps and PPE Kits. Even after resumption of construction work, the team members are standing up to the challenge of executing work at site during lockdown conditions strictly following all the preventive measures,” he reassures.

With so many roadblocks to overcome, Ramachandran, who has previously had three-​year stints each at the Beawar-​Pali-​Pindwara and Sambalpur-​Rourkela Road projects since joining L&T in 2012, rolled up his sleeves to address them. “With the help of the administration, we started rig operations in the night shift and completed 2 piles by maintaining piling tools and Kelly repair and released the piling rig within the lockdown period. In the meantime, the rig kelly cracked during the piling due to the hard strata,” he adds, wiping his brow. Next, they repaired the two owned wheel loaders with spare parts from Kolkata despite that city being a red zone. “We sanitized the parts carefully before use,” he says.

Dilip Choubey,
Senior Manager — Accounts (RREC)

His almost-​white beard gives him a scholarly almost professorial look but Dilip Choubey is in the thick of action at his first project with L&T — the Veer to Bhogaon Khurd Road project (VBRP) stationed at Mahad in Maharashtra. It has been tough going for Dilip and his team ever since the lockdown began because as he shares, “a workman from the sub-​contractor, Silas Estefan Logan, took ill on March 26th and was admitted to the KEM Hospital in Mumbai. Doctors confirmed that he was not a Corona case but a case of asthma. Unfortunately, he expired on 28th from pneumonia.” Despite the lockdown Dilip, accompanied by Anil Kumar Sharma (Admin & IR) travelled to Mumbai to complete the formalities which they did including cremating the body in Mumbai. “Returning to site with the ‘asthi’ of the deceased workman proved an ordeal for us as we were stopped at every check post and detained by the police till the morning without any food and water. We did all this because we owed it to young Silas,” shares Dilip emotionally.

Earlier, a false video of the patient breathing heavily started circulating in the small town of Mahad claiming that a L&T workman was COVID-​19 positive. “From the midnight of 24th we received several calls from the local police stations, SDM, sarpanches and people about the video and on 25th they started creating a nuisance by not allowing to stay in their villages where our security, labour and RSW workmen were staying and to remain in our Office, camp and labour colony. We had to approach the District Magistrate and the SDM to sort out the matter and convince the authorities, the local reporters and the villagers about the truth,” says Dilip with a huge sigh of relief.

Dilip hails from the village of Sonebersa in Buxar. His wife, Manju Devi is a homemaker and their three children are son, Abhishek, and daughters, Karishma and Shivani. “I enjoy good food and spending time with my family and what I remember most is receiving and handing over my first salary cheque in 1993 to my mother and the look of joy on her face,” he shares with a bright smile.

“Our first task was to convince the workmen not to travel, that it was safer to remain in our labour camps. We provided for sufficient food rations, conducted periodic health check-​ups, sanitized all premises, arranged for separate rooms for new workmen and distributed all the safety gears.” Jatindra mentions the use of WhatsApp to share communication and updates with the workmen. “We verified all our arrangements with the local District administration and health department authorities. They appreciated our initiatives that drew the attention of the local media and a detailed report was published both in print as well as the electronic media,” shares a very pleased Jatindra. At the same time, he agrees that it was a triumph of teamwork. “We were able to perform excellently thanks to the guidance and moral support of our Project Manager and Project Accountant. They gave us a free hand to take decisions for the betterment of the project as well as the organisation. I am also especially thankful to my seniors at cluster level as well as HQ,” he adds.

Jatindra joined L&T in 2008 and his first posting was at the Ahmedabad Viramgam Maliya Road Project after which he did a stint at the VIP Road flyover project till 2015 before moving to his present assignment. Hailing from Bhubaneswar, Odisha, Jatindra’s life partner, Saritanjali, understands him well and even sounds a little like him when she says, “I am not anxious that he will bring the infection home, but I certainly worry about his health.” They are blessed with one son, Jathwik. “I like gardening,” he smiles.

“Taking care of the employees, workmen, the society and the country at this time of the pandemic is a rare aspect and am proud to be an L&T’ite. I salute L&T!”

“During the lockdown, being a core member and head of the COVID-​19 response team of the site under the leadership of our Project Director, we were committed to provide all logistic support to the 730-​odd workmen and 70 bachelors at site with sincerity and a sense of responsibility,” affirms Mohan Chandra Joshi (MCJ, for short), describing his role fighting the virus. Presently posted at TI IC’s Dwarka Expressway project, his first challenge once the lockdown was announced was to reach his site. “Since I am put up at Gurugram, I had to deal almost daily with the police and the district administration to let me through until I managed to get a pass from our client, NHAI/​District Administration to move freely.”

MCJ and team had several diversified activities at site including daily cleaning, fumigation, maintenance of hygiene at the labour camp, thermal scanning, supply of rations, water and electricity and arranging for an ambulance. In addition, they frequently visited government offices or brought them over to visit and inspect the site. “I maintained very good relations with all administrative officers,” chips in MCJ, who also handles medical services. “I had to deal with some of the regular fever cases and to keep them motivated and safe from COVID-​19 was a challenge,” he says. “We looked after these cases end to end, providing them with adequate medical cover through tie-​ups with hospitals and facilitated daily visits of the Medical Officer and staff.”

MCJ joined L&T in 2006 as a Supervisor-​IR and some of the major projects he has been associated with include IMCC JV (Phase — I of DMRC – ‘MC1B’), MTG JV (Phase II of DMRC ‘BC18 project’), SGRP and DARP. “I have a rural background, hailing from a small town in Uttarakhand,” he shares. “My wife, Ganga is a homemaker and both my sons, Gaurav & Saurav, are collegians. I stay with my aged mother,” he adds. “Although initially, my wife supported my efforts soon she started to get scared as the number of positive cases rose in Delhi NCR and did not want me to expose myself but with much convincing they have allowed me to continue and discharge my duties.”

As soon as the COVID-​19 induced national lockdown was announced, everyone started to scramble to shift their offices to their homes so that work could continue without too much interruption and IT professionals like Yobu Paul swung into action to make this possible. “Our responsibility was to provide remote desktop support for all the TI IC employees in a short time, ensure the availability of hardware like laptops for the junior cadre staff and provide desktops at home, wherever laptops were not available,” shares Yobu. “Working from home was new to many of my colleagues but with our help and prompt action, they have been able to adjust quickly, and work has continued fairly uninterrupted.”

Yobu and his team’s actions brought about the required changes. “Uninterrupted virtual meetings were arranged through MS Teams & Zoom,” he points out, “and we facilitated access to data available in shared file servers and internet security is through Zscaler application. There were also some lively webinar sessions that we arranged accommodating more than 2500 employees,” he says with a smile and then adds seriously, “Digital data security has been applied in all the VPN enabled devices and internet access is restricted to users to safeguard our company data across diversified platforms.”

About his association with L&T, Yobu shares that he joined the company as a contract employee at the Kattupalli Port project in 2010 as an ISD coordinator. “A year later, I was moved to TI IC at Mumbai as the IC ISD coordinator. All along, my seniors have been extremely supportive and have always given me full freedom to work,” he says with a satisfied look. “When the initial phase of the lockdown was announced, my entire team started working vigorously to ensure smooth functioning of work from home for all the employees. With limited IT infrastructure, we managed to support our EDRC and other department users by enabling them with VPN access and we have successfully enabled access for 150 users during the lockdown.”

On his personal front, Shardindu says he comes from a small town in Bihar named Arrah. “My wife, Nitu is a teacher in a private school in Noida and I have two children, daughter, Arya and son, Anay. Initially, my wife supported my efforts but later as the positive cases in Delhi rose, she was against me going out fearing that our children would get infected but I must thank my family for standing behind me to allow me to discharge my duties fully,” he says with gratitude.

While for many, the lockdown meant being stuck at home, there are many for whom life went into overdrive as new responsibilities were put on their shoulders to keep things moving. The IR folk have been one such lot for whom the lockdown has posed several tough questions and Anil Sharma, at the Veer (Wadpale) ‑Bhogaon Khurd Project (VBRP), will agree completely. “We initiated a series of proactive preventive measures for the wellbeing and safety of our staff and workmen,” he prefaces, “including Permission to Start work from the District Magistrate during the first lock down period from 7th April.” Anil and his team successfully obtained passes/​permissions for seven vehicles from the very first day of the lockdown to monitor the health and movement of their workforce.

“Some of our daily measures included pep talks on do’s and don’ts, displaying awareness posters at office, guest houses, workmen habitant and sites and explaining how to maintain hygiene and social distancing to prevent the virus,” he informs. “Since our project is in a rural area, bulk food material was not available. We therefore took the District administration’s help to arrange for food for the workmen.” Other steps taken by Anil and his team included regular temperature screening of all at site or office, installing a disinfection tunnel at the entry gate and motivating all the employees and workmen to install the Arogya Setu App as per the guidelines of the government.

Anil is grateful to his seniors for their support and guidance, “especially, my senior Dilip Choubey, Manas Ranjan Panda and Ms Poonam Chandok for recognizing my contribution which has given my confidence and my morale a huge boost to work even harder in this fight against COVID-​19!” A visibly charged Anil acknowledges the support of his team members too in the process. “Without their cooperation and dedication towards the work we could not have achieved our goal,” he says sincerely.