BHUBANESWAR: Residents of Salia Sahi on Thursday expressed strong resentment accusing BMC of not taking adequate measures to check spread of the virus in the city’s biggest slum.
They alleged that despite repeated requests to quarantine people coming from outside especially from Ganjam and other Covid-19 hotspot districts and states to the slum, no action has been taken by the civic body so far.
“Around 150 people have entered the slum from Ganjam, Balasore and other parts of Odisha as well as Bihar in the last two weeks. However, BMC officials have taken less than 20 of them to institutional quarantine facilities,” alleged Jayadeb Nayak, a resident of Ekamra Vihar slum in Salia Sahi.
Nayak, a local leader and a member of Covid committee, said Salia Sahi is spread over four wards and has 43 clusters with approximately 35,000 households.
“As there is little scope for social distancing, we have been requesting the civic body to take neighbours of those testing positive to institutional quarantine facilities instead of asking them to be in home quarantine, but to no avail,” he said.
With detection of a new case in the last 24 hours, the number of active cases in the slum has been increased to five.
A field level official of BMC said door-to-door surveillance is being carried out in all the slums to contain spread of the virus.