NEW DELHI: More than a dozen villages in the North West district of the national capital are waging a different war among themselves; for winning the 'fully vaccinated' title.
To encourage villagers to get COVID jab and push forward vaccination in the rural belts of Delhi, the Kanjhawala subdivision of North West district has come up with this new concept of making villages compete among themselves. The initiative titled 'Corona mukt gaon abhiyan' took off on Wednesday.
The winner of the 'battle' will take home a trophy given by the district administration while a board stating the achievement will be affixed at a prominent place in the village. Budhanpur Majra, Salahpur Majra, Chandpur, Kanjhawala, Ladpur, Ghevra, Sawda, Garhi Rindhala, Nizampur, Jaunti (including Jheemarpura), Tatesar, Punjab Khore, Qutabgarh and Jat Khore are the villages in Kanjhawala sub-division.
"Kanjhawala is one of the backward areas in Delhi. It is still very much rural and we have villages where people practise agriculture. So keeping in view the kind of village community that exists in this area, we wanted to capitalise our resources and encourage people to come up in huge numbers to get vaccinated which is why we have started this competition. We hope this becomes a movement and more people come out and get vaccinated," said SDM Soumya Sharma, who is heading the initiative.
Under this scheme, the village with highest proportion of its adult population vaccinated as on July 31 will be declared winner.
To give the initiative more publicity, street plays will be organised in villages. Further, ground-level functionaries including 75 BLOs and anganwadi workers, panchayat secretaries and NGOs have been roped-in.
"It is not that the count of vaccinated people is too low, but we want more people to come out and get the jab," Sharma stated.
Wherever vaccination hesitancy is reported, the administration will be arranging mobile vaccination camps and pick-up and drop facilities for the beneficiaries. Sessions with healthcare professionals will be organised to remove misconceptions.
"Some hesitancy happened when someone took the jab and felt the common post-vaccine symptoms," the SDM said and added that once a household is fully vaccinated, the officials would put stickers outside declaring 100 per cent vaccination status.
The administration will ensure that sufficient vaccination centres are opened in the vicinity of all participating villages,” Sharma further said.