QChennai: Govt Told To Provide Rice, Dal To Non-Card Holders
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1. Govt Told To Provide Rice, Dal to Non-Card Holders
The Madras High Court on Friday directed the State government not to insist upon the presence of migrant labourers and others who do not possess ration cards at the Collectorates concerned to obtain 15 kg of rice, one kg of dal and one kg of edible oil offered to mitigate the hardship caused by the nationwide lockdown to fight COVID-19.
A Division Bench of Justices Vineet Kothari and R Suresh Kumar feared that asking people without ration cards to approach the jurisdictional Collectorates might defeat the object of maintaining physical distancing. Hence, they ordered that the essential commodities be supplied to such people too in the nearest ration shop itself. In order to keep a check over any irregularities in supplying the commodities, the ration shops must be ordered to submit the details of daily transactions to the Collectorate, they added.
(Source: The Hindu)
2. Man Dodges Officials For a Week, Tests Positive
A 40-year-old COVID19 patient from North Chennai’s Korukkupet has been dodging civic body officials for the last one week. “Every time we went to his house looking for him, his family said he wasn’t there,” said the officials. Finally, after being tipped off by his neighbours, Corporation officials took the help of the police and entered the house on Thursday.
The man was found and taken to the Stanley Hospital. He tested positive on the very same day. A resident of Bharathi Nagar, he was one of the thousands from the state to have attended the event at the Delhi mosque. The patient has been in the city since March 22, but when the Domestic Breeding Checkers visited last week, he was not home.
(Source: The New Indian Express)
3. Virus Alert: Eight Clusters Identified, Access Points Sealed
The Chennai Corporation has identified eight hotspot clusters in the city where multiple COVID-19 cases have been reported, and imposed strict restrictions on the movement of residents and traders in these areas. On Friday, the clusters were sealed by authorities and barricades placed at various entry points to prevent movement of vehicles. Uniformed police personnel began guarding vantage points to ensure that residents did not venture out of their houses, even for buying essential commodities.
The Corporation has deployed 25 to 30 people in each cluster to identify symptomatic cases. “Once the symptomatic cases are identified, the doctors will come in. The person will be given an option to go to a private hospital. If not, the doctors will make arrangements for an ambulance to take them to government hospitals. Baseline data in hotspot clusters have been generated and more than 150 persons with symptoms have been admitted to hospitals,” said an official.
(Source: The Hindu)
4. Lockdown Pushing Auto Drivers Into Massive Debt Traps
Almost every sector is suffering due to the lockdown, but the worst hit are those who depend on daily wages. With vehicles and people going off the road, auto drivers across the country have been badly hit. Unable to do business over the last 10 days, many of their families are struggling to make ends meet.
“On average, if we make around Rs 2,000 to Rs 2,500 a day, we get to keep about Rs 600-Rs 800, after all expenses,” says K Rajarathinam of Ambattur. “My loss over the last 10 days is at least Rs 6,000.”
The daily expenses at home isn’t what haunts them, at least not as much as the money they may have borrowed from local lenders. “It hangs over our head, all the time,” says one driver. There are other drivers, who have bought their autos with bank and private loans, now staring at huge dues.
(Source: The New Indian Express)
5. TN Prisoners Make 36,000 Surgical Masks Everyday
The prison authorities have pooled in the expertise of inmates with tailoring skills to increase the production of surgical face masks to meet the growing demand of the Police Department, which has deployed thousands of its personnel to enforce the COVID-19 prohibitory orders and maintain law and order in the State.
Shutting its tailoring units temporarily, the Prison Department commenced manufacturing of face masks. The inmates of Puzhal, Tiruchi and Coimbatore central prisons rolled out 3,000 face masks a day. With the police asking for more, Director General of Police Sunil Kumar Singh asked the inmates in three more central prisons to join the work and increased the productivity to 36,000 face masks per day.
(Source: The Hindu)
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