Five days after about 40 PCS officers of Punjab organized a meeting of their association at a hotel in Chandigarh's Sector 42, nearly 11 of them have fallen prey to the novel coronavirus on Wednesday.
Reportedly, the meeting was organized by the PCS Officers Association on July 3 to protest against the Vigilance Bureau action and an arrest of fellow PCS officer, Tarsem Chand, who was posted as RTA, Faridkot. The association denounced the move and demanded VB to take corrective steps.
It all started with Ludhiana ADC (General) Amarjit Singh Bains, who reported positive three days after the meeting. By Wednesday evening, the names of 11 PCS officers had been confirmed by the government sources to have tested positive.
Apart from this, reports of at least eight officers are awaited and the rest are preparing to get themselves tested. It has been said by the sources that most of the officers are asymptomatic.
After Ludhiana, ADC (General) Amarjeet Singh Bains, SDM (Khanna) Sandeep Singh, and ADC (Jagraon) Neeru Katyal Gupta have tested positive.
Others in the list include Municipal Commissioner (Hoshiarpur) Balbir Raj, SDM (Hoshiarpur) Amit Mahajan, SDM (Phagwara) Pavitter Singh, SDM (Mohali) Jagdeep Singh, SDM (Fatehgarh Sahib) Dipankar Garg. Rajiv Gupta, posted as Director Employment, Harjeet Sandhu, posted as Secretary, State Transport Authority, Chandigarh, SDM (Ropar) Gurwinder Johal, SDM (Shahkot) have also reported positive for COVID-19.
With PCS officers falling in the trap of coronavirus, the state's bureaucracy has now been gripped in panic as the government has been holding its meetings with several officers from different departments. Despite the government advisory against large meetings, the association had held the Chandigarh meeting.
While most of them, who have tested positive were seen wearing masks in the meeting, the PCS officers were not maintaining social distancing.
Punjab Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan tweeted wishing a speedy recovery to employees. She wrote: “We wish a speedy recovery to the employees who have tested positive and urge all to exercise necessary precautions in the discharge of their duties, especially wearing of masks in closed/crowded spaces.”
The Chandigarh Secretariat has now closed the building for the meetings amid the fear of community spread and has also restricted the entry of the visitors' to it.
In another precautionary measure, the Police Headquarters has also been closed to curb the further spread of the contagious disease. The officers who had come in contact of the infected officials have also been directed to undergo home-quarantine for 14 days.
With three PCS officers in Ludhiana testing positive, the district administration has been hit hard by the pandemic. The admin has appealed to people to avoid rushing to offices with ‘manual applications’ for work.
Ludhiana Deputy Commissioner (DC) Varinder Kumar Sharma, who is in quarantine himself, said: “Public dealing jobs are always at high risk. We all need to reduce the number of chairs in our offices. On average, 150 manual applications are coming to me on a daily basis. People are coming from far off villages to get their work done manually. Hence, we appeal to people to get maximum work done online. It is not just about our inter-departmental meetings, but also the large scale public dealing in the offices of every officer. Our meetings are going to happen online now onwards. “
When ACP (Ludhiana North) Anil Kohli had tested positive in April, meetings had gone online. The then DC Pardeep Agarwal, Commissioner of Police Rakesh Aggarwal, and many other officials had got themselves tested and had also quarantined themselves.
But as Unlock 1.0 began from June 1 onwards, things started opening up again.
Meanwhile, other officers who have also been instructed to put themselves under quarantine are Civil Surgeon Dr. Rajesh Bagga, RTA Damanjit Singh, Joint Commissioners, Municipal Corporation, Swati Tiwana, and Kulpreet Singh, Executive Officer, GLADA, Sonam Chaudhary, District Revenue Officer Joginder Singh, SDO, GLADA, Harpreet Sekhon.
Apart from them SDM (East) and SDM (West), and Additional Commissioner Administrator (ACA), GLADA, have also been asked to observe quarantine, along with district public relations officer and his staff.
With this, top officials of almost all the departments of Ludhiana have been put under quarantine, thus affecting the day-to-day functioning. Forty more primary contacts of these officers have also been quarantined and are being tested.
In other districts too, the situation is not encouraging, apart from PCS officers, other functionaries too have been contracting the virus in the last few days.
A judge in district courts in Jalandhar has tested positive forcing his staff to be quarantined. In another case, the PA of a police officer has also contracted the infection after which the Jalandhar Commissionerate of Police office has been closed for the visitors.
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In Bathinda, a sessions judge, who hails from Chandigarh, has tested positive and is being treated at a UT hospital.
The Sangrur Civil Surgeon, Dr. Raj Kumar, has been admitted to the ICU of Rajindra Medical College and Hospital, Patiala after he complained of fever and breathlessness. His RT-PCR test report came back positive on Wednesday.
Dr. G B Singh, Civil Surgeon, Barnala has been given additional charge of Sangrur for the time being. Sangrur DC Ramvir said, “Two epidemiologists who were in contact with civil surgeon have tested negative while his family and immediate staff have been quarantined.”
A tehsildar of Balachaur in Nawanshahr had tested positive and his office was sealed on Tuesday.
Dr. Rajesh Bhaskar, nodal officer for Covid-19 in the state, said, “So far 53 health workers have been tested positive throughout the state, these include ward attendants, nurses, ASHA workers, and even doctors. So far there is no causality among these workers.”
To safeguard the lives of the top bureaucrats, the Health Department has directed them to practice COVID-19 preventive measures. Furthermore, the officers who are more open to the public dealing like SDMs, DSPs, ADCs, SSPs, and DCs have been asked to refrain the meetings to curb the further spread of the contagious disease as it is being said that in July coronavirus will be on its peak.
Not only officials but, Ministers are also trying to restrict their meetings with the public, online meetings have become more preferable.