WE CAN’T SCREEN LAKHS OF PEOPLE, SAY SCR, TSRTC

People arriving into Telangana by land routes, either by train or bus, could pose a serious challenge to the state’s strategy of containment of coronavirus (Covid19), given the sheer number of passengers arriving using these modes of transportation. It is practically impossible for both the railways and TSRTC to effectively conduct thermal screening, the primary health check method to inspect passengers, for fevers, given the sheer Brobdingnagian scale of logistics.

The South Central Railway (SCR) moves over 10.50 lakh people on a daily basis across the zone. The Secunderabad railway station alone caters to over 1.5 lakh on an average daily, mostly within a 16-hour timeframe.

SCR officials said that railways officials are alert to the situation. In the past week, the SCR has launched an awareness campaign for staff and travellers.

Sanitation staff with masks have been tasked to cleaning all surfaces which people are most likely to come in contact with, like bathroom doors, latches, taps window rods and so on. Railways has stopped giving out blankets to passengers of A/C coaches as they are not washed every day. At stations across the country, railways has set up isolation wards in the event of an outbreak.

However, SCR officials admitted that it was impossible to conduct thermal screening on all passengers. “There are far too many people for that. We don’t have resources to do something like that,” an official in the operations department said. Another official said that such a measure would create panic among most passengers.

A member of the Zonal Railway Users Consultative Committee, requesting anonymity, confirmed the same. “There are things which Railways does well and some it doesn’t. But it is simply illogical to expect us to thermalscreen all passengers. Railways doesn’t have that capacity,” he said.

The Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (RTC) has been sanitising its vehicles on a daily basis. An RTC official said, “we move over one crore people each day. The idea of screening everyone, though ideal, is impractical.” He indicated that it was unlikely that such an order would be passed.

Another senior official said that such decisions could only be taken by the health department at the secretary and minister level, and refused to comment further. It may be recalled that Tamil Nadu has been screening some rail and bus passengers coming from neighbouring states. TN chief secretary K Shanmugam had announced this decision in view of local spread of virus in neighbouring states.

Closer home, Telangana health minister Etela Rajendar, at a recent press conference, had claimed that it was extremely challenging to screen all those coming into Telangana via road or rail.