SAMBA: An Ambulance driver from district Samba ferries COVID-19 patients, with servitude, across north India including Delhi, Amritsar, GMC Jammu and other places.
Sardar Jarnail Singh has been assigned the said job and he is doing it without any fear. Many times, he himself lifted the patients and put them in the ambulance as the attendants refused to help due to the fear of contracting the coronavirus. He has so far ferried more than 300 positive patients in Samba district, 103 in the last month alone. Since last year, he has transported more than 1500 Covid patients to different cities.
As soon as the coronavirus ripped through the entire vulnerable population, doctors, nurses, paramilitary, police officials, and ambulance drivers could grasp what life was like on the frontlines. Cheers and jeers, the community faced both, on and off the job. But samba-based ambulance driver, Jarnail Singh, was unfazed by the threat and the abuses being hurled at Covid warriors. “When soldiers fight to keep us safe, they don’t think about themselves. Everyone gets time to act; this is our time,” he says, insisting that duty comes first.
Jarnail says that service to humanity is the work of God, and it’s SEWA, selfless service and I’m doing my part. “Yes, it feels great when someone recognises my effort,” says Jarnail when enquired about the recognition he received from Lt Governor Manoj Sinha. “That was something I will never forget in my life, now my world has changed.”
“Wherever I go, people recognize me and it gives me immense strength. I wholeheartedly express my gratitude to the LG sir for recognizing me and my effort,” adds Jarnail Singh.
When it comes to his own, Jarnail says I have instructed my family members to stay inside the house because he often comes home after spending the majority of the day being in the vicinity of the virus and he does not want his family to get into trouble because of him. He has even stopped visiting friends and relatives. “I take care of myself by wearing PPE kits, using sanitizers and using masks but I know there is always an element of risk in my job but don’t let that fear overrule my conscious,” says Jarnail.
