Former Minister and senior Congress leader Raman Bhalla on Saturday demanded Govt to immediately start delivering ration to people in order to avoid mass gatherings at ration depots in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was stated by Bhalla while distributing food items among poor and needy families in Gandhi Nagar constituency on 5th consecutive day at Channi Himmat . Prominent among those who accompanied Bhalla include Block President Jatinder Singh Chib, General Secretary DCC Aman Bawa, Deepak Gupta, Atul Sharma, Iqbal Singh beside others.He demanded to work out a plan for door-to-door distribution of ration and other essential commodities to consumers to avoid long queues and large gatherings at ration depots. He also called for imparting training to police and employees of district administration on tackling COVID-19 infected or suspected persons. He urged the Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC) and Urban Local Body (ULB) employees to ensure the implementation of sanitation and fumigation drives across Jammu.
Bhalla asked the government to come up with concrete relief measures including financial assistance and free ration, for a larger section of society, whose livelihood has got affected due to inter-district transport ban and other restrictions imposed by authorities in view of coronavirus outbreak in J&K. Bhalla expressed resentment over charging urban poor for ration when govt had promised to provide free ration to poor for two months during lockdown.Bhalla said, while necessary measures including ban on all types of public transport and normal movement across Jammu and Kashmir is imperative to tackle spread of deadly virus, the government should also take concrete steps to mitigate sufferings of people affected by these restrictions. Bhalla expressed concern over plight of families whose livelihood has got badly hit due to these mandatory restrictions. Unfortunately, the Jammu and Kashmir Government seems to be a mute spectator to their miseries and sufferings. Like other Governments, J&K government should also come up with measures to help the people who are unable to sustain their families in these hard times,” Bhalla demanded.
He said that a vast section of the society including labourers, daily wagers, vendors, ITI trained labourers, transporters and shopkeepers, whose livelihood has been drastically affected by restrictions on gatherings, assembly and movement of people both in cities and other district headquarters and towns across Jammu and Kashmir need to be helped out by the government in these pressing times. “The central government must extend all possible support including free ration and other essential commodities to such families who are otherwise compelled to come out of their homes to make their living. Such families should be provided free ration and monthly financial assistance till the situation normalises and restrictions are eased out on public movement,” Bhalla observed. He remarked that the novel coronavirus was causing terrible financial stress on poor in Jammu and Kashmir like other parts of the country and, as such, government must announce extra ration from government depots and fair-price shops for BPL and other underprivileged families, totally free of cost.
In view of possible threat of spreading Covid-19, Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC) should take measures to stop the spreading of coronavirus by giving special focus on sanitation of the entire city and intensive thermal fogging and spraying has been conducted to sanitize the atmosphere so that the chances of virus transmission to others can be minimized to the extent possible. He said that directions must be given to Health Officer, JMC to conduct spray of Sodium Hypo Solution in the affected areas on war footing to keep check on spread of virus. Besides, special drives should also be conducted in all the city hospitals of Jammu like Government Medical College, Bakshi Nagar, Sarwal Hospital, Gandhi Nagar Hospital, SMGS Hospital, CD Hospital, Super Speciality Hospital etc,” Bhalla said, adding, the whole exercise should be done under the supervision Health Officer, JMC. Bhalla said that thermal fogging drive should continue till the eradication of coronavirus from the entire Jammu region. The special drives should also be conducted in all the residential and commercial areas of Jammu city to keep control on spread of such virus, he added. Municipal workers, waste pickers need gloves. General public should also ensure that they segregate waste at source, reducing the need for municipal workers to touch and separate waste manually, which would expose them to infections,” he said. Furthermore, he added, “Scientifically, gloves/masks should be incinerated post usages but since it can’t be practised at every household, hence there should be a different garbage bag to dispose house-hold biomedical waste such as used tissues, gloves etc. especially during the current outbreak.”
Bhalla further said that at a time like this when there is a spread of a global pandemic and the nation has been locked down in order to contain the contagion, granting limited access to internet facilities by restricting the speed to only 2G in J&K is unreasonable”. Emphasizing the need for 4G internet speed in times when the country is facing outbreak of an epidemic, Bhalla said, “With limited and restricted access to the internet by allowing only 2G speed in the UT, patients and doctors are unable to access latest information, advisories, and guidelines. lays out real time difficulties being faced by health care personnel in the UT and states, “Various public health practitioners, medical professionals, and doctors have repeatedly expressed their concern about wasting precious time trying to download the latest studies, protocols, manuals and advisories on treatment and management of COVID 19. In some cases, doctors are not able to access these resources at all, due to the internet speed being too slow to download heavy files, he added.Bhalla termed 4G internet as an indispensable tool in the fight against COVID19. It is not only the health care that is affected due to slow internet but it has made access to education as well as access to justice difficult. With such a low internet speed, teachers are unable to impart education via virtual classes and litigants are unable to approach the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir through virtual modes such as video conferencing for urgent relief.