State sanctions fresh funds for COVID battle

Chennai

According to the GO, volunteers who assist COVID-19 patients and the quarantined families in Chennai Corporation will get Rs 500 per day and SHG members, involved in field work in Tiruvallur district, will get Rs 575 per day.

In the wake of increasing COVID-19 positive cases in the city, GCC Commissioner had passed instructions to appoint volunteers in COVID-19 works, in the ratio of 1:10 houses to monitor the home quarantined people and home treated positive patients.

The volunteers will also take care of the basic needs of the home quarantined people by arranging essential services at their doorsteps. The volunteers will ensure that the persons from the quarantined families will not come out of their houses for basic needs.

To calculate the required number of volunteers, GCC Commissioner stated that as the current COVID-19 positive case load is 1,200 per day and there will be at least three houses in close contact with the house of the positive patient. So 3,600 houses need to be monitored on a daily basis along with the 1,200 houses which will take the tally to 4,800 houses per day. For 14 days, 67,200 houses need to be monitored and so 6,720 volunteers are required for monitoring. The state government had allotted Rs 40.32 crore to pay volunteers Rs 500 per head per day for four months.

Similarly, in Tiruvallur, SHG members are “engaged for assisting the block medical officers and reporting the field activities.” Nearly, 10 SHG members are assigned to each primary health centre for which 680 SHG members are engaged and state government had allotted Rs 1.17 crore from State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) to pay the SHG members for one month.

In another GO, the state government had sanctioned Rs 16.66 crore for COVID-19 works from SDRF. The fund will be used for COVID-19 related works in Tirupur, Chengalpattu, Madurai, Ranipet and GCC. State had allotted Rs 10 crore for GCC “for focused expenditure to settle food bill for COVID-19 care centres.”