IFS trainee stuck in native joins COVID-19 fight
ANANTAPUR: While it is an extended holiday for some, who can afford, and a challenging time for the frontline workers dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, this young Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer from Hindupur, who came to his house on a vacation, preferred not to sit at home. The 29-year-old trainee officer, Chinta Chaitanya Kumar Reddy, volunteered to join the fight against COVID-19.
A graduate from BITS Pilani and completed his masters from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Chaitanya has the experience in working in Left-Wing Extremist-affected areas while doing his Prime Minister’s Rural Development fellowship. “As part of the fellowship, I worked in Bhadrachalam in Telangana for three years on issues related to tribal development,’’ he said.
“It’s my responsibility to work at this time of crisis. I approached the District Collector (Gandham Chandrudu) during one of his visits to a Hindupur red zone area and asked him to give me a chance to join the government’s fight as I am a trainee civil services officer. The collector agreed,’’ he said and added that he started working in the red zone areas in coordination with the joint collector since the second phase of the lockdown.
Explaining his work, Chaitanya said the strategies in a red zone change every day. “We have to change the strategy when the situation demands. In the initial days, our strategy was to contain the spread of the virus and wait for the persons with symptoms to turn up and get them tested. Now, we have started random testing. In one way, we are hunting the virus now. Earlier we have tested the contacts of the positive cases, but now we are conducting tests on a large scale,’’ he explained. Chaitanya was all in praise for the volunteer system in the State.
“Volunteers, ward members and village secretariat staff are coming in handy for us. In view of red zone and lockdown, we are also catering to the needs of the poor and trying to mitigate their sufferings,’’ he asserted. Chaitanya gets on to work by 10 am and works for nearly seven to eight hours a day. “As the number of containment zones are increasing, our work includes barricading of the localities, making available provisions and setting up medical teams,” he said.