Loveleen
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister was discharged from hospital after recovering from COVID19 and will be in home quarantine for another week. He was in hospital for eleven days in Bhopal. As he recovers back, COVID19 cases in the State have crossed 35,000 mark and death toll 912.
Though State Government has always said that they have been able to control COVID19 spread in the State and they are doing better then many other States in India. However if one looks back into way COVID19 spread in Madhya Pradesh, how State officials of health, Police have been affected and now Political leaders, including Ministers, and Chief Minister himself, which shows failure of the State to follow steps to prevent the spread.
Social distancing and use of face mask is missing in Political meetings, rallies. Facemask is there, but is only chin mask in majority of these meetings. Social distancing is completely missing and the moment there is picture or media to be faced, social distancing goes hayway. Not only for these political leaders, even for media personnel taking the interview with camera’s social distancing is a dream.
Forget Political meetings, which are easy to blame, one looks at the meetings in Vallabh Bhawan, the secretariat of the Government and use of facemask there is a major miss. Not to be seen are handwashing stations which should be at all places in the secretariat of the Government. Health and Police two most affected departments are still having meetings inside the hardly ventilated halls of their offices with outside visitors, norms of social distancing are not followed.
All norms of meetings and social distancing are formed by health department are for people beyond their departments. And what a best way to find it out, just look at minutes of meeting and one knows the number of people participating in it and the venue, one doesn’t need do to investigative journalism to find it out. And in Police department, recently order was passed by Director General of Police — MP, which was in a story in Hindustan Times that all the leaves of Police personnel stands cancelled and need to be approved by DGP, so that they don’t go home and spread the virus.
Around 588 Police personnel were infected with COVID19, but still one can see majority of police personnel on streets of Bhopal, and Indore not wearing facemask properly. Recently Bhopal Municipal Corporation had done a campaign on promoting use of Face Mask, but it was only for media nothing much has changed.
One change which is recent is after ten day lockdown and media reports of increasing cases of COVID19 one sees mask, though proper use and actual use is missing. And how can State enforce or push for its use when its department of Health, and Police and Political leaders don’t use the same. Now with Chief Minister recovering, he should be taking this up strongly and first call should be to ensure that social distancing and use of facemask needs to be practiced in reality in the political meetings, in Secretariat and Government offices and to protect its Police force.
