An all-party meeting chaired by the Mayor at the city Corporation on Monday decided to step up the COVID-19 preventive measures and awareness campaigns on the ground.
Councillors across all parties will lead the measures at the local level. A 25-member volunteer force will be formed in each of the wards, to work in coordination with the ward-level monitoring committees.
Volunteer force
“The volunteer force is being formed as a precautionary measure for future needs. As of now, our situation is not yet comparable to the previous year’s, when community kitchens and several other systems had to be taken care of. The volunteers will be registered in an online portal and provided identity cards. They will be used for help in shifting patients to hospitals, to track events in wards, or to provide other help. In addition, we have five teachers in each ward to trace the primary contacts of each positive case and to upload in the COVID Jagratha portal,” Mayor Arya Rajendran told The Hindu.
Series of meetings
The Mayor, the Corporation Secretary, and Health Standing Committee Chairperson, is chairing a series of meetings with 10 councillors at a time, to collect their suggestions on various issues at the ground level.
Two of these meetings were held on Monday and eight more will be held in the next two days.
The suggestions will be collated and a report placed at a meeting to be chaired by the Mayor with the District Collector, District Police Chief (Thiruvananthapuram city), District Medical Officer, and other officials on Thursday.
The public will be required to register weddings and other events in the Corporation’s portal too, in addition to the Jagratha portal.
Control room
The COVID-19 control room set up by the civic body for the public to reach out for any information regarding the pandemic will be expanded with more awareness on the control room numbers (0471-2377702, 2377706) being spread through zonal offices and health circle offices.
The public announcement of COVID-19 protocols will be expanded with special announcements in Hindi and English in East Fort and Thampanoor to target migrant workers.
In addition, permanent arrangements will be made in 11 major locations in the city.
