The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Friday directed the State government to provide adequate protective gears to the sanitation workers in municipalities and panchayats as was done in the case of Corporation staff.
A Division Bench of Justices P.N. Prakash and B. Pugalendhi observed that a similar monitoring mechanism implemented by the Corporations should be in place to see to it that sanitation workers in municipalities and panchayats were using protective gears. Compliance must be ensured, the court said.
In the case of police personnel, Additional Advocate General K. Chellapandian said that over 54,000 police personnel were provided face shields along with other protective gears. These frontline workers were engaged in the sensitive areas like checkposts and markets. The same will be provided to other policemen, the court was informed.
The court directed the government to provide adequate protective gear to police personnel across all cadre and also ensure that they wore the face shields while on duty. Photographs of the protective gears were submitted to the court. The court was hearing a batch of public interest litigation petitions.
The petitioners had sought a direction to the government to ensure that non-medical frontline workers like police and sanitation workers were also provided personal protective equipment similar to that of the health workers, in view of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the directions, the petitions were closed.
