SRINAGAR: The Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) is using high-tech machinery and drones to sanitize summer capital, Srinagar in view of the unprecedented ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Divulging details, the Commissioner, SMC, Gazanfar Ali said that the General Council meeting conducted on March 10 to combat deadly Covid-l9 virus provided a detailed outlook and futuristic plan to the SMC and its officials.
“We geared our men and machinery immediately after the Council meeting,” Ali said. “We also studied the crumbling of the administrative, healthcare and solid waste management order in some developed countries and build our roadmap on that,” he said.
The Commissioner said that SMC was continuing all its efforts to mitigate the spread of dreaded Covid-19 virus. He said that Srinagar Municipal Corporation has incorporated a robust and large scale high-end mechanism in the vulnerable areas for decontamination.
“To slow down the unprecedented outbreak, it was a major challenge before SMC to cope with. In this regard a meeting was convened by the SMC Mayor, Junaid Azim Mattoo—where decisions were taken to procure disinfecting chemicals and machines for decontamination,” Gazanfer Ali said.
Keeping in view the exigency of all this, the whole machinery was airlifted by Indian Air Force. Procurement of safety equipment—including body suits, hand gloves, masks, goggles and alcohol based hand sanitizers was also done swiftly.
“Since the outbreak was so fast that there was no time for conducting meetings framing any strategy to combat Covid-19 as routine matter,” he said. “This also made situation worse in some areas—which later became epicenters,” he said, adding “In some situations, you being in administration learn with the mistakes of others, so do we. We are constantly reaching out to the people and at the same time, studying the trends of the virus,” he said.
He informed that during the Council meeting, the decision was taken on war footing basis for taking the preventive measures and the machinery and chemicals were procured for decontamination of the Srinagar city.
“We immediately swung into action. 150 shoulder mounted spray machines (automatic mechanical) were procured on an exigency basis for decontamination purpose which proved to be fruitful,” he said, adding “Sufficient number of manual spraying shoulder mounted machines also proved to be effective in the process of sanitization,” he said.
