Haryana govt sends top bureaucrats to high-risk districts: ‘Personally inspect each toilet in Covid/isolation centres’

The state government on Monday identified 15 districts and deputed 14 senior IAS officers to visit each of these districts for two consecutive days and two consecutive nights to supervise and review current arrangements. As per orders issued by Chief Secretary Keshni Anand Arora on behalf of Haryana Governor Satyadev Narayan Arya, the officers have also been directed to plan out arrangements to be put in place based on their analysis of the rate of spread of coronavirus in the state.

The bureaucrats and the districts allocated to them are as follows: Sunil Kumar Gulati in Nuh, Vijai Vardhan in Gurugram, Sanjeev Kaushal in Faridabad, Alok Nigam in Rohtak, Devender Singh in Yamunanagar, T C Gupta in Kurukshetra, Amit Jha in Kaithal, Mahavir Singh in Bhiwani, Sudhir Rajpal in Palwal, Anurag Rastogi in Jhajjar, Raja Shekhar Vundru in Rewari and Mahendragarh, Vineet Garg in Karnal, A K Singh in Sonipat, and Anurag Aggarwal in Jind.

The officers have been asked to conduct an “audit of actual implementation of all relevant instructions of the health department and of the respective district administrations in every containment zone”. They will also be conducting an “audit of actual implementation of health department’s notifications regarding ban on not wearing masks in public places etc. as well as SOPs on social distancing issued by the home department and urban local bodies department”.

The officers will be conducting “physical inspection of all ventilators, ICU beds and beside oxygen beds in non-ICU wards in all private and public hospitals in the district”.

They have also been instructed to ensure all officials of police, urban local bodies, health and medical education and research departments in the district “are galvanised into action and are motivated to carry on the fight against Covid-19”.

They must “energize all registered volunteers of the district and make arrangements for their best deployment by the district administration” and “prepare a complete inventory of all available resources for testing, isolation and treatment of all patients of Covid-19”.

For future planning, the officers must “prepare an estimate of resources that would be needed if the current rate of spread of the coronavirus goes on for the next couple of weeks” and “identify opportunities for expansion of ventilators, ICU beds, non-ICU beds with bedside oxygen facilities and quarantine and isolation facilities as per the assessment.

For the remaining districts including Panchkula, Ambala, Fatehabad, Charkhi Dadri, Panipat, Hisar and Sirsa, the officers in-charge of the district concerned have been asked to submit their findings on the same lines.