THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: To bolster prevention and control activities against Covid-19, the state government has decided to make use of 35 per cent of the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF). The utilisation of the fund will be for quarantine, sample collection, screening, and procurement of essential equipment for labs. According to the state government, the decision was taken based on a direction it received from the Disaster Management Division of the Ministry of Home Affairs. It was on Tuesday that the state government decided to make use of the SDRF.
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“The Union Government has declared Covid-19 as a notified disaster. States were also permitted to use SDRF for the containment of the pandemic. But later it partially modified the norms of assistance. The state thus has decided to use 35 per cent of the fund for Covid-19 activities under two heads,” said a source. As per a directive issued in this regard, it has been mentioned that 25 per cent of the SDRF will be used for quarantine, sample collection and screening and 10 per cent for procurement of essential equipment for labs.
Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) member secretary Sekhar L Kuriakose said: “The allocation of SDRF for 2019-20 fiscal is `224 crore. The 35 per cent for Covid-19-related activities will have to come from this allocation. The amount will be sanctioned for various activities as per the directions of the crisis management team headed by the chief secretary.”
According to KSDMA, assistance under SDRF could be offered for temporary accommodation, food, clothing, medical care, and other needs of affected people sheltered in quarantine camps (other than home quarantine) or for cluster containment operations. The other components for which the SDRF could be used are for buying consumables for sample collection, support for checking, screening and contact tracing and others, setting up additional testing laboratories within the government sector, personal protection equipment for healthcare, municipal, police and fire personnel and thermal scanners, ventilators, air purifiers and consumables for government hospitals.
At the same time, last Saturday, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding him to reinstate the provision of using SDRF for providing relief to the families of anyone who succumbs to Covid-19 and for the treatment of those tested positive. The provisions that were first included in a letter by the ministry on the day was later modified by deleting the two clauses.