BHUBANESWAR : If you are in the age group of 18-44 years or above and have spent a considerable amount of time tracking the CoWin platform to book a slot for vaccination but failed, don’t lose heart. Try the offline route and there is ample chance that you will make it.
For this, you need to get in touch with any of the MLAs in the city and your work is half done. If you have direct access to any of the ex-corporators, then nothing like it. For those unable to contact any of them, there is also the option to get in touch with a ward officer, community organiser or Sachetak of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC). Once the initial task is taken care of, be sure of a slot and a token for vaccination.
The unofficial yet effective procedure to get the jab came as shock for a woman who had been struggling to book a slot for her husband and daughter for the last 10 days. Her domestic help took the route and got inoculated. When asked how did she manage to do it, pat came the maid’s reply, “It was a token issued by a ward officer.” What came as a bigger jolt for her was when her maid offered to arrange tokens for the daughter and husband.
This is not the only instance. A senior leader of an opposition party who did not wish to be named told this paper that he had to take the same route to vaccinate five of his personal staff including driver. “I was worried when the vaccination in private hospitals was suspended. As the situation in the vaccination centres became chaotic and finding slots for them became difficult, I contacted a youth BJD worker who does not hold any position in the party. He assured me that the job will be done. The next day he sent me five tokens and my job was done,”
The BMC had authorized the ward officers to distribute tokens to elderly, infirm and destitute people. The former corporators demanded that the tokens be distributed by them. As BJP’s former corporators objected, they were also given the tokens to buy their silence. “It was decided that 10 tokens will be distributed in each of the 67 wards in areas under BMC’s jurisdiction daily.
When the ex-corporators of the BJD demanded more, the ward officers complied. As number of tokens went up, more disturbances were reported at the vaccine centres because equal number of eligible people were denied the jabs. The same problem continued even after slot booking as the number of doses per vaccine centre was limited and the tokens issued by BMC given priority,” sources in the BMC said.
Show-cause to pvt hospital for overcharging
Bhubaneswar: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Friday slapped show-cause notice on a private hospital for charging excess money from patients for treatment of Covid-19. BMC officials said Sunshine hospital on Cuttack-Puri road was issued the show-cause notice for not adhering to the government prescribed fee structure for treatment of Covid-19 patients.
The civic body’s move comes after Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik asked authorities to take stern action against private hospitals charging excess money for Covid treatment. The State capital reported 988 new cases and two deaths against 777 recoveries in the last 24 hours. Around 50 cases each were reported from Patia, Nayapalli and Old Town while places like Khandagiri, Baramunda, Laxmisagar and Rasulgarh also reported cluster outbreak of a number of cases. The city now has 11,418 active cases while the death toll has increased to 289.