BENGALURU: Community-level Covid Care Centres (CCCs) should be set up at the earliest and citizens must participate, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Commissioner N Manjunatha Prasad said on Monday. He said these community committees will have to be formed in all the 28 assembly segments at the earliest. L K Ateeq, in charge of committees for Covid-19, said citizens must also speed up and understand that there is a need to decentralise the management of Covid-19. To ensure that there is quick formation of committees and work on ground, the original structure of the ward committees need not be altered at the moment, he said.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Ateeq held a meeting with RWAs and set a deadline for the formation of the ward disaster management committees. He said by Friday the committees should be formed and meetings held. The proceedings of the meetings will be uploaded on the dashboard, which is being created in coordination with Janaagraha, an NGO.While some showed interest, many people were reluctant to be a part of the RWA meeting because of the lockdown.
The BBMP had directed all corporators, RWAs and ward committees to hold their first meeting. But only 60 committees held meetings. There are 198 wards in Bengaluru and the officials noted that in many localities RWAs do not exist.
Noted activist Kathyayini Chamaraj said there is a need for the formation of the ward disaster management committees so that there is better management. She said that the government was adopting the Kerala model for the formation of local committees. However, there are too many and there is lack of coordination. For instance, some MLAs and MPs have also formed committees which run parallel to what the BBMP is doing.A senior BBMP official said committees were not formed in many wards because the corporators termed it a futile exercise as they claimed to be working in their individual capacity.