‘Double’ work will lead you astray

Tuesday 18 May 2021 12:26 AM IST

During the Covid period, every department of the government had back-breaking job, especially for the health department and the local government department. Yesterday we published a report entitled - Two groups for the same job; Covid Stat Error. The news points out that the employees of the local and health departments, who are engaged in Covid prevention activities day and night, are doing the same work due to lack of coordination.

The Department of Health collects accurate information on patient, prevalence and treatment of the disease . What was pointed out in the report was about the errors made by the local body institutions.
The stats of disease in areas under local self-governments the CM alludes at the press conference is based on the data collected by the Local Government Department. If there is a mistake in this, it will reflect in the CM’s evening announcement.

The local government department is not able to collect accurate information about the test positivity rate, the number of patients being treated and the number of people being tested. However, since there is pressure from top level, they rush through the job and botch it up

. As the saying goes, 'a snake will not die if there are too many people', this duplication will do more harm than good. Data on corona proliferation are crucial. It influences the decision on restricted area, hotspot, lock-down, triple lock-down and so on. If two departments give two types of figures on the same subject, there may be an error in deciding these matters. In addition, it can lead to a decline in preventive measures.

While collecting patient information and disease prevalence data is a basic job of the Department of Health, why is the Local Government Department working to do that job?

There is a huge discrepancy between the figures of the health department and the local bodies. In the last few days, the report of the local government department had found that the disease is 100 per cent contagious in some panchayats. But even the panchayats came to know about this when the information came out. The most serious thing is that they are handing over these erroneous figures to the Chief Minister. The war room headed by the Principal Secretary of Local Government in the Secretariat is also wasting time and misleading people after doing the job of the Health Department. This duplication of the job by Local Government Department comes at a time when there are heavy responsibilities such as ensuring comfort to those on home quarantine, providing alternative accommodation for those at home and running community kitchens. But they should not lose war after sitting inside war room. What else can be said?

Advertisement
Advertisement