Hyderabad: Is Telangana set to see ‘relaxations’ in coming days? Well, that’s what the State Minister KT Rama Rao hints at and is hoping for. Suggesting that the state needs to reopen and start getting back up on its feet..slowly, he said that "we need to learn to live with the Virus".
The IT and municipal administration minister said that he is in support for a phased out lockdown in Telangana, adding that there will be more ‘economic activity,’ reopening of industries in the coming days.
The state has been following a complete lockdown model with minimum easing or industrial activity.
“I am rooting for a phased, calibrated dwindling down of lockdown. That is my personal opinion. I will be championing this line of thought. And I hope majority of them will agree and the CM will also agree that the state can slowly reopen and start getting back on its feet,” he told News18 in an exclusive interview.
The Centre, on Friday, extended the lockdown two more weeks beyond May 4. However, the Telangana government, had earlier, declared a lockdown till May 7th. The state cabinet is set to meet on Tuesday to decide the further course of action and take a call on relaxations.
The minister, also chief minister KCR’s son, said that he would propose a phase-wise cut down of the lockdown in the meeting.
The state will now be looking on boosting up the economic activity in days to come and industries, slowly, will be back up and running. According to the minister, the government will turn it’s focus to heavy weight projects such as ‘Hyderabad Pharma City’ – a mega project, spread over 19,000 acres, which the government hopes to position it as "World's Largest Integrated Pharma Park" to promote domestic manufacturing of pharmaceuticals in line with the "Make in India" initiative of the Government of India.
Another key focus area would be strengthening Telangana’s textile industry, he said.
“You will see more economic activity opening up in Telangana in days to come. We’ve taken a conscious decision – it is not a tossup between lives and livelihood, we have already started factories in rural areas. Essential services have been running. You will slowly start seeing Industries opening up in Telangana. But of course in a new way of operation, of course with a new way of operation, physical distancing etc,” he told News18.
KTR, on Friday, also wrote to Union Ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad and Piyush Goel suggesting measures to reboot and energise the economy and attract investments. A few of them include on how governments can focus on creating world-class infrastructure, such as industrial parks, world-class it is, polutechniques, on a mission mode over next one year.
“India will need a lot of blue-collar jobs after this crisis. We will see a great deal of unemployment and great deal of people coming back from Middle-East due to unemployment. We need to offer opportunities to our manufacturers, so that there is competitiveness with respect to exports with other countries including China,” he said.
The minister had also suggested that there needs to be more focus on skill building and capacity building in coming days. “All of these things need to be done yesterday. We’ve missed on investments already,” he said.
As per the Centre’s classification of zones, there are about six ‘red zones,’ in Telangana. Hyderabad and its outskirts remain under ‘high focus’ areas after more than 50 percent of Covid cases reported from State were recorded in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Limits.
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