BENGALURU: Was the week-long lockdown in Bengaluru Urban and Rural districts a waste of time, wondered experts, who are part of the government and wished to remain anonymous. Government authorities had assured Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar and other top officials before July 14 that booth committees would be trained and ready, and they would complete a door-to-door survey to identify people vulnerable to Covid before the lockdown ended on Wednesday early morning.
But though the lockdown has ended, the crucial data on people with comorbidies, ILI and SARI is yet to be available to the government to fight the pandemic effectively, said the experts. The plan was to appoint officials to the committees in the first one or two days of the lockdown that is July 16 and 17, train them by July 18 and conduct the survey over the next three days -- July 19, 20 and 21.
But TNIE found out that the exercise has not been done successfully during the week. Over 800 officials assigned to booth committees did not report to work, affecting the crucial data collection exercise. In Yelahanka alone, over 300 officials did not take up the task and there were complaints that they gave an old list to the government. When the Yelahanka zone comes up for discussion with Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa on Thursday, officials and political leaders concerned will find it hard to cover this up, the experts pointed out.
Change of guard at the BBMP during the week too had an impact as many decisions that previous commissioner B H Anil Kumar took were revised by the new chief, Manjunath Prasad. Prasad, who also has to take care of his previous responsibility as principal secretary of revenue and disaster management, has too much on his plate, especially when he should exclusively be managing the fight against the pandemic, the experts said. The delay in conducting the survey and getting the data could prove costly in the coming days, they warned.