BMC trains sanitation workers to remain safe
Bhubaneswar: With frontline health and emergency workers testing positive for Covid-19, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Monday started imparting training to its 2,800 sanitation workforce as they are vulnerable given their nature work.
The BMC wants that in a week, all the sanitary workers are trained on safety aspect of Covid-19. The sanitary workers include sweepers, supervisers, ward officers, sanitary inspectors, drivers and helpers of garbage transporting vehicles. On Monday, 157 of them were given training at Patia. The training module included how to maintain social distancing, personal hygiene, hand hygiene and how to wear personal protective equipment (PPE)
Excluding holidays and shutdown days, the training will continue in different wards on all days. The Unicef is supporting the training programme and resource persons engaged by it are imparting the training. For the city, 10 such resource persons have been roped in, said an officer of BMC.
The officer added that the sanitary workers are exposed to outside since they are collecting waste. The city so far has not reported any sanitation worker contracting the virus. But the workers need to understand how to wear a mask and how to remove it safely. Since there are various kinds of waste they are handling, they should not be callous, the officer added. So far in the state more than 200 health workers, including doctors, nurses, housekeeping and cleaning staff of hospitals, panchayat representatives in different villages, including sarpanches, Ashas and others have been infected by coronavirus. In capital city alone, 30 health workers have tested positive for Covid-19.
A BMC source said besides massive awareness at community levels, which is being carried out by Sachetak teams and Resident Welfare Associations, they are targeting vulnerable groups. The Sachetak teams are simultaneously covering different wards to educate common people, especially the elderly on how to remain safe.
On Monday, the city added 11 new positive cases taking the total infected to 196. This time all the positive cases were reported from home quarantined and there were no local (not quarantined) cases. While six are from UP and they are working in Mancheswar industrial estate, two have travel history to West Bengal. Three infected persons are railway employees. They have travel history to Delhi. The city now has 100 active cases with the death toll at three while 93 have recovered.