Lockdown: Telangana gram panchayats to learn how to monitor migrants
HYDERABAD: The National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR) is launching an awareness initiative to help gram panchayats (GPs) across the country deal better with the Covid-19 outbreak.
This initiative would also help GPs to monitor the influx of migrants returning from various cities and ensure they are adequately screened.
As part of the initiative, it is launching several ‘Corona Prevention’ courses on NIRDPR’s newly-launched online learning management portal ‘Gram Swaraj’ (www.gramswaraj.nirdpr.in).
While one course provides basic information about the disease, the other gives an overview of how gram panchayats can play a role in preventing the disease.
It also suggests appointing volunteers who can keep track of those have a travel history from abroad or cities, and “to mantain an overall surveillance in the area to ensure that the citizens remain at home”. An NIRDPR release said that volunteers would also be responsible to “report first symptoms of Covid-19 infection, if any, to health authorities” that will help shift patients to medical isolation.
WR Reddy, Director General of NIRDPR, said, “As part of the Constitutional mandate, the Panchayats are familiar with the preparation of the Gram Panchayat Development Plans (GPDP). The GPDP has been an important element of ‘low cost’ or ‘no cost’ development initiatives, which have transformed many Panchayats into progressive, developed islands across the country. The present crisis of Covid-19 can be tackled by such measures using sheer imagination and passionate leadership of the Gram Panchayats.”