Junction Stalwart
Bilaspur is the second largest city of Chhattisgarh, the headquarters of the South East Central Railway Zone and the seat of the high court of the state. The court and the railway junction are responsible for the large number of outsiders here in the city. This also presented a big challenge for the administration in its COVID-19 operations.
On March 25, the first case was detected after an intensive search for citizens with a foreign travel history. A total of 215 people were tested on priority leading to the first patient. His contact-tracing resulted in the testing of 26 people and surveillance on a further 38,000 others across the district.
DM Sanjay Alung, being from the state, used his inside knowledge of how social and economic ties work here to good use. He has been able to impress on the people the importance of social distancing to prevent the spread of the disease and also establish a network to ensure availability of food and rations and their home-delivery.
To enforce social distancing, the collector enlisted the services of NCC volunteers and ‘Sipahi’, a group of ex-servicemen, and deployed them across the district. The ex-servicemen won the hearts of the citizenry through their salutes to those who followed the rules and very fauji reprimands to those who did not. Akhilesh, a local Chhattisgarhi actor, also produced a song to get the message across.
A big challenge came up the day the Railways decided to halt passenger operations. There were a huge number of trains— mostly migrant workers rushing back to their native states of West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Odisha—that were halted at Bilaspur. The station was chock-a -block with people—a huge risk with the virus all around. Alung established 14 relief camps in the district for those caught in the lockdown. The stranded migrants continue to get food and accommodation besides medical monitoring.
Aware that the lockdown will have to be lifted at some point, ) Alung has organised some 1,000 surveillance teams to cover the 1,000-odd villages and all the wards in Bilaspur city. They have been asked to report every person who shows flu symptoms. “Every individual who enters the district, either by train or road, will be identified and scanned by these surveillance committees,” says Alung. The collector runs a tight ship in Bilaspur. ■