Residents Oppose COVID Care Centre In Housing Society

Mehab Qureshi

Pune, September 20, 2020: Residents of the two-storied residential Rajhans building, located in Vadgaon Anand near Alephata in Junnar taluka, claim that the COVID Care Centre has been built by illegal conversion of Ugale’s Children hospital on September 6, and has been working in complete violation of the guidelines issued by the government.

Rajhans Building has two floors -on the first floor is the hospital and on the second floor, 2-3 families reside. “On the second floor reside my in-laws who are senior citizens and have high chances of contracting the virus. My father-in-law is diabetic and is easily prone to be infected with the contagious disease”, said Mohan Rao, who is the son-in-law of the residents living in the society.

Rao also claims that the conversion of the hospital to COVID care facility was not informed to the residents earlier. The conversion was done without any consent. “They have set up a COVID care centre at a building which does not have any separate entry or exit, there is no hand sanitizing arrangements and no one is taking care of the thermal screening measures”, he said.

Meanwhile, Rao further said that no oversight video camera monitoring facility or security arrangements exist to monitor the entry and exit of the patients and their relatives to ensure that the virus is not transmitted to others. “It appears that no scrutiny and evaluation of the site was done to set up a COVID care facility by the authorities. Also, The problematic part is that my in-laws are compelled to use the same staircase which is used by COVID patients”, he added.

“The biomedical waste is directly being dumped behind the building, which faces the front door of the residents of the same building, increasing the chances of further exposure to the virus”, Rao told Punekarnews.in.

When contacted, Zila Parishad CEO Ayush Prasad said, “Considering the number of cases in Junnar this COVID facility was opened. However, there is no alternative facility available, if we are given an alternative location we are ready to relocate the facility”.

Asked about the disposal of medical waste, Prasad said, “We will take action against the agency if they are disposing of the medical waste in such manner.”