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In Pimpri-Chinchwad, three children orphaned by Covid-19, 253 lost one parent

Civic body to rehabilitate orphaned children and give one-time aid of Rs 10,000 to 2,000 women widowed by pandemic

In Pimpri-Chinchwad, three children orphaned by Covid-19, 253 lost one parentOf the 253, 212 children lost their father and 41 lost their mother. (Representational image)

Three children in Pimpri-Chinchwad have lost both parents to Covid-19 while 253 have lost either their father or mother since the beginning of the pandemic last year, a civic body survey revealed.

Of the 253, 212 children lost their father and 41 lost their mother. Approximately 2,000 women were widowed due to Covid-19, the survey by the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) found.

Additional Municipal Commissioner Ulhas Jagtap, who headed the committee for this survey, said on Monday, “The committee was appointed by PCMC commissioner on the directions of the district collector. We have sent the report to the district collector. As and when we get more information, we will update it and send to the collector,” he said.

Jagtap said PCMC will rehabilitate the three children who have been orphaned and help the other children under various schemes of the women and child welfare department.

Additional Municipal Commissioner Vikas Dhakane said that under welfare schemes of the women and child welfare department, widowed women will get Rs 10,000 as one-time aid. “However, we are trying to see if we can pay them Rs 25,000 to one lakh. We will need the state government’s permission for this,” he said.

Pimpri-Chinchwad has so far reported 2,53,713 Covid-19 patients. Of the 4,208 deaths, 60 per cent were men. The case fatality rate (deaths per 100 cases) among men is 1.60 and 1.30 among women.

“A majority of men who died of Covid-19 are in the 30 plus age group. Many of them are married. We estimated that more than 2,000 women have been widowed,” said a health department official.

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Health officials said that from June 5 to 12, there were more recoveries than new cases. “As many as 2,600 patients recovered in this period while 1,970 were infected. Every day, we are registering less than 300 cases this month. In March and April, the number of daily cases was between 2,000 and 3,000,” officials said.

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.   Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were  asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.     Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More


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