Patnaik delivers oath to 6798 village heads to keep their areas free from COVID-19

Bhubaneswar, Apr 22 () After bestowing the power ofdistrict collector to village heads, Odisha Chief MinisterNaveen Patnaik on Wednesday administered oath to over 6700Sarpanchs to work towards keeping their areas free frominfection.

The village heads from all the 6,798 Gram Panchayats tookthe pledge administered by the CM through video conferencing.

I take pledge to sincerely work towards containingspread of novel coronavius in my panchayat for the publicgood. I will ensure keeping the people coming from otherstates in quarantine and look after their stay, food andtreatment, read the pledge.

They also promised to implement the guidelines of thestate government to prevent spread of the highly infectiousdisease.

While interacting with some of the sarpanchs, Patnaiksaid he has full confidence in the efficiency of the electedpeoples representatives and therefore empowered them with thecollectors power.

I am sure, if you sincerely follow the governmentsguidelines, coronavirus cannot enter in villages andpanchayats. Do good works. Me and my government are with you,Patnaik told them.

The state governments action appears to have come inanticipation of return of about 5 lakh workers strandard indifferent states during lockdown to their villages after thenationwide shutdown is lifted.

Majority of the returnees will come from COVID affectedstates and they will directly go to the villages, PanchyatiRaj Secretary D K Singh told the sarpanchs.

He said the state government has already madequarantine arrangements for all the returnees at panchayatlevels. As according to the reports about 80 per cent of peopletesting positive in different parts of the country areasymptomatic for coronavirus, the government has made puttingthose coming back in isolation mandatory, Singh said, adding adedicated portal will be launched on April 24 for registrationof these people.

Since most of the returnees belong to working class,the government has decided to give each of them Rs 2,000 asincentive money on completion of 14-day quarantine period,Singh said, adding a nodal officer will be appointed for eachgram panchayats.

This apart, the Block Development Officers (BDOs) arealso told to set up a 5-member monitoring team for everypanchayat.

Panchayati Raj Minister Pratap Jena, Chief Secretary AK Tripathy and Chief Ministers private secretary V K Pandiyanalso interacted with the sarpanchs and answered their queries. AAMSNS SNS