Letters to the editor dated October 19, 2020

This refers to ‘Coordinated regulation’ (October 19). In view of countries across the globe facing increased threat on account of tainted money being used for tax evasion and perpetuating terrorist activities, Mauritius being brought under “grey list” of FATF necessitating intense monitoring is a welcome move.

Many large corporations of different countries are incorporated in Mauritius with the sole purpose of evading tax, depriving the countries of their legitimate income. Limited public disclosure and negligible taxation in Mauritius have contributed to the same.

In this background, it is expected that there is a uniformity in the approach on the part of the regulators in the area of monitoring. There is no doubt that PN (Participatory Note) and Mauritius routes are two major sources of funds flowing as FPI contributing to stock market boom. But the same should not happen at the cost of financial stability due to lax anti-money laundering and terror financing controls.

Hence the need for a uniform regulatory approach on the part of the RBI, SEBI and the government to tackle this menace.

Chennai

Apropos ‘Why productivity is almost everything’ (October 19), if there is one asset that has been shabbily treated by most of our governments/organisations, it is the human asset. An organisation’s success to a large extent is determined by the quality of people and hence investing in their well-being in terms of education, health and training is paramount.

Human assets, if properly handled, groomed and counselled, will become invaluable and give a boost to other assets of the organisation as well. India’s lack of good counselling systems is one of the causes for low productivity.

Thane

One of the key hurdles because of which India ranks very low in HR productivity in manufacturing organisations is the recalcitrant attitude of trade unions. They equate productivity-enhancing measures like work study, work simplification and work sampling with manpower reduction.

This resistance is the most in loss-making companies even when productivity increase is crucial for the survival of such entities. One way of overcoming this is the use of incentives such as gain-sharing schemes in which the gains (savings) arising out of cumulative efforts of employees are shared with them. These gains may be in the form of production, sales or value addition.

Along with this, an organisation-wide drive is also necessary to allay the misgivings of the employees about the intention of the top management. A climate of trust between management and the unions needs to be established.

Pune

According to the WHO, severely-affected Covid-19 patients do not benefit from remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir and interferon regimens. The global health body’s Solidarity Therapeutics Trial has found that these repurposed drugs to be inefficacious in improving survival rates and shortening hospital stay of people severely infected with coronavirus.

It is sobering to realise that these repurposed drugs cannot be used for treatment of Covid-19. Be that as it may, it is better to know if a drug works or not than not to know and continue to use it.

The absence of evidence for clinical benefits for hospitalised Covid-19 patients from the drugs trialled in the Solidarity Trial will now make changes in clinical management protocol for Covid-19 necessary.

Meanwhile, pharmaceutical firms that had orders for these drugs were disappointed at the findings. However, the findings from the gold standard trial conducted on 11,266 patients at 405 hospitals in 30 countries have been widely accepted to be credible and conclusive.

As a result, doctors would now stop prescribing these existing drugs as Covid-19 medications.

Maruthancode, TN

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