Amit Shah to introduce Citizenship Amendment bill in Lok Sabha today

Kochi, Feb 29: When Major Abdul Rahim, a soldier in the Afghan army, died in a bomb blast in Kabul on February 19, a tear was shed for him in far away Ernakulam district of Kerala.

The major had received a transplant of hands from Eloor native T G Joseph back in 2015, and the latter’s family had grown attached to the Afghan soldier.

Maj. Abdul Rahim, a bomb disposal expert, had lost his hands in an explosion in 2012. For three years thereafter, he struggled with his handicap. Then, when 54-year-old Joseph passed away in a road accident, it was decided to give his hands to the Afghan major.

The transplant procedure was successfully performed by a team of doctors led by Dr. Subrahmania Iyer at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in Kochi.

After the transplant and an intensive spell of physiotherapy, Abdul Rahim could regain a considerable part of his hands’ functions. He rejoined the army and returned to defuse bombs in his war-torn country.

In gratitude, Major Abdul Rahim would visit Kochi every year to meet Joseph’s family. 

“We were shocked to hear of the demise of Major Abdul Rahim. Though Joseph left us, a part of him lived on. Abdul Rahim was a living memorial for us. Whenever he came to the Amrita institute for a consultation, we used to visit him,” Joseph’s wife was quoted as saying by Mathrubhoomi daily.

Major Abdul Rahim struck up a good friendship with his predecessor, in a way of speaking: the first person to have had a successful hand transplant at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences. T R Manu became a close friend of the Afghan solider and kept regularly in touch.

The ILO has warned that if another Covid-19 wave hits in the second half of 2020, there would be global working-hour loss of 11.9 percent - equivalent to the loss of 340 million full-time jobs.

According to the 5th edition of International Labour Organisation (ILO) Monitor: Covid-19 and the world of work, the recovery in the global labour market for the rest of the year will be uncertain and incomplete.

The report said that there was a 14 percent drop in global working hours during the second quarter of 2020, equivalent to the loss of 400 million full-time jobs.

The number of working hours lost across the world in the first half of 2020 was significantly worse than previously estimated. The highly uncertain recovery in the second half of the year will not be enough to go back to pre-pandemic levels even in the best scenario, the agency warned.

The baseline model – which assumes a rebound in economic activity in line with existing forecasts, the lifting of workplace restrictions and a recovery in consumption and investment – projects a decrease in working hours of 4.9 percent (equivalent to 140 million full-time jobs) compared to last quarter of 2019.

It says that in the pessimistic scenario, the situation in the second half of 2020 would remain almost as challenging as in the second quarter.

“Even if one assumes better-tailored policy responses – thanks to the lessons learned throughout the first half of the year – there would still be a global working-hour loss of 11.9 per cent at the end of 2020, or 340 million full-time jobs, relative to the fourth quarter of 2019,” it said.

The pessimistic scenario assumes a second pandemic wave and the return of restrictions that would significantly slow recovery. The optimistic scenario assumes that workers’ activities resume quickly, significantly boosting aggregate demand and job creation. With this exceptionally fast recovery, the global loss of working hours would fall to 1.2 per cent (34 million full-time jobs).

The agency said that under the three possible scenarios for recovery in the next six months, “none” sees the global job situation in better shape than it was before lockdown measures began.

“This is why we talk of an uncertain but incomplete recovery even in the best of scenarios for the second half of this year. So there is not going to be a simple or quick recovery,” ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said.

The new figures reflect the worsening situation in many regions over the past weeks, especially in developing economies. Regionally, working time losses for the second quarter were: Americas (18.3 percent), Europe and Central Asia (13.9 percent), Asia and the Pacific (13.5 percent), Arab States (13.2 percent), and Africa (12.1 percent).

The vast majority of the world’s workers (93 per cent) continue to live in countries with some sort of workplace closures, with the Americas experiencing the greatest restrictions.

During the first quarter of the year, an estimated 5.4 percent of global working hours (equivalent to 155 million full-time jobs) were lost relative to the fourth quarter of 2019. Working- hour losses for the second quarter of 2020 relative to the last quarter of 2019 are estimated to reach 14 per cent worldwide (equivalent to 400 million full-time jobs), with the largest reduction (18.3 per cent) occurring in the Americas.

The ILO Monitor also found that women workers have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, creating a risk that some of the modest progress on gender equality made in recent decades will be lost, and that work-related gender inequality will be exacerbated.

The severe impact of Covid-19 on women workers relates to their over-representation in some of the economic sectors worst affected by the crisis, such as accommodation, food, sales and manufacturing.

Globally, almost 510 million or 40 percent of all employed women work in the four most affected sectors, compared to 36.6 percent of men, it said.

The report said that women also dominate in the domestic work and health and social care work sectors, where they are at greater risk of losing their income and of infection and transmission and are also less likely to have social protection.

The pre-pandemic unequal distribution of unpaid care work has also worsened during the crisis, exacerbated by the closure of schools and care services.

Even as countries have adopted policy measures with unprecedented speed and scope, the ILO Monitor highlights some key challenges ahead, including finding the right balance and sequencing of health, economic and social and policy interventions to produce optimal sustainable labour market outcomes; implementing and sustaining policy interventions at the necessary scale when resources are likely to be increasingly constrained and protecting and promoting the conditions of vulnerable, disadvantaged and hard-hit groups to make labour markets fairer and more equitable.

“The decisions we adopt now will echo in the years to come and beyond 2030. Although countries are at different stages of the pandemic and a lot has been done, we need to redouble our efforts if we want to come out of this crisis in a better shape than when it started,” Ryder said. 

Jaipur, Mar 11: A 85-year-old man in Jaipur, who had returned from Dubai on February 28, has tested positive for coronavirus, a state government official said on Wednesday.

He was found presumptive positive in the first test on Tuesday and hence, a second test was conducted with fresh samples, the reports of which arrived late Tuesday night, Additional Chief Secretary, Medical and Health, Rohit Kumar Singh, said.

“The man who travelled to Dubai has been tested positive for coronavirus. It has been confirmed now,” Singh said.

“We have also got the manifest of the Spicejet flight he took from Dubai to Jaipur and are doing due diligence on that,” the official said, adding that intense contact tracing was underway.

The man has been kept in isolation at the SMS Hospital here.

“The man came to the hospital on Monday with symptoms of the virus. After the first test, his wife and son too have been kept in isolation at the hospital. The two, however, do not have coronavirus affliction symptoms,” Singh said.

A total of 235 people who came in contact with the octogenarian and his family have already been traced and are being monitored, he said.

Other contacts are also being traced, Singh added.

An Italian couple, who tested positive for COVID-19 last week, are also admitted in the hospital but their condition is improving, he said.