No non-essential services in Delhi till March 31: Kejriwal

New Delhi, March 20 (SocialNews.XYZ) Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday directed heads of all Delhi government departments to discontinue non-essential public services till March 31.

At the same time, all employees of non-essential services have been allowed to work from home, Kejriwal told the officials during a meeting here.

He directed all departmental heads to prepare lists of staff that shall be permitted to work from home.

"For departments providing essential services, employees above the age of 55 can also preferably work from home, which shall be decided by the respective HoDs," the Chief Minister said.

"We have two public service categories -- essential and non-essential. I want every HOD to make lists of essential and non-essential services. This list will be made keeping in mind the public dealing activities, which means we have to find out which are essential public dealing activities and which are non-essential," he added.

Kejriwal said that only employees dealing with essential services should be present in their offices.

However, he said, the government will not be able to relieve senior officials involved with most essential services, like doctors.

During the meeting, it was also decided that all employees, including contractual, would be paid salaries for this period.

"There is a sudden spike in number of coronavirus cases in Delhi in the last 24 hours. All Delhi government officials and city residents have fought this battle very hard, because of which we have been able to contain community spread. But there is a need to expedite our efforts to combat the situation," Kejriwal added.

He said the health of officials and employees too is very important.

Meanwhile, Delhi Jal Board has suspended meter-reading and billing for current round with immediate effect till March 31. Consumers left out of the exercise will be billed in the subsequent billing rounds, it said.

Source: IANS