CHENNAI: If home quarantined or living in close contact with coronavirus-patients, your movements will now be watched as Chennai Corporation will be appointing 6720 volunteers in the city.
The need for 6720 volunteers a day to monitor 67,200 houses belonging to COVID-patients or those living in close contact has been worked out considering there will be at least three houses which will be in close contact with the house of a positive patient.
Working out a case of 1,200 patients per day, a total of 3600 houses will need to be quarantined and monitored per day for 14 days in addition to 1200 houses of positive patients. In total, 4,800 houses have to be monitored every day and a total of 67,200 houses for 30 days, according to a Government Order.
Sanctioning a sum of Rs 40.32 crore based on one volunteer for 10 houses in Chennai, the commissioner of revenue administration has stated that each volunteer will be paid an honorarium Rs 500 per day for four months to monitor the houses under state disaster response funds. This comes as Commissioner of Greater Chennai corporation has requested the Chief Secretary to appoint volunteers (on payment basis) in the ration of one volunteer for 10 houses to monitor home quarantined people and home treated positive patients and also to take care of their basic needs by arranging essential services at their doorstep.
Similarly, a sum of Rs six crore has been sanctioned as relief fund to approximately 60,000 people living in the slum areas after Chief Minister Edapaddi K Palaniswami announced a relief fund for people living in slum areas under institutional quarantine. Working on estimates that around 2,000 persons are quarantined per day in Chennai which works out to 60,000 people per month, the sum of Rs six crore (Rs 1000 per person) was worked out and was sanctioned by the government.
Similarly, Rs 1.17 crore has been sanctioned for 680 self-help group members assigned to primary health centres. It is learnt that 10 SHG are assigned to each primary health centres functioning in Thiruvallur district.