E-Paper
Residents suffer as MCG wrongly pastes ‘home under quarantine’ stickers
Gurugram:
Gurugram:
Amid the growing fears over the spread of Covid-19 pandemic, many residents of the city have found themselves at the receiving end, with the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) incorrectly pasting ‘do not visit, home under quarantine’ stickers outside their houses, despite them not being under the quarantine list.
Ashutosh Batta, a resident of DLF Phase 1, said that he discovered the sticker on the floor of his driveway last week, with an address that was not his. He used social media to complain to the MCG, but despite response to his message, no action has been taken as yet.
His bigger concern, Batta says, is that the family it was meant for could easily be roaming around, with their neighbours unaware they are meant to be under quarantine.
“The address and the name of the person mentioned in the sticker were completely different from mine. I tweeted to the MCG about this and also got a response from the civic body. I expected further communication from them but nobody has contacted me. I am worried that those who need to be under quarantine are roaming freely in the city, and their neighbourhood is completely unaware of it,” said Batta.
RS Randhawa, a resident of DLF Phase 2, says MCG workers mistakenly put a sticker meant for his daughter, who married earlier this year and now resides on Sohna road, outside his home without speaking to him beforehand.
He said that due to the stigma attached with the stickers, he has faced problems with the delivery of essential items while garbage collection workers have also refused to collect waste from his house ever since, even though sticker is no longer there.
“I ordered some items online, but the delivery boy refused to even keep the packet outside my gate. Even after the quarantine period was over, and I was permitted from authorities to remove the sticker, the garbage collectors still refuse to pick my household waste. I have no choice but to dump the garbage every day outside my office located nearby from where waste is collected,” said Randhawa.
Similarly, a complaint by a resident on MCG’s social media account highlighted the incorrect details in the sticker pasted outside the person’s home such as the quarantine period starting from June 4-18 and the address mentioned as “Sector 7 or Sector 10A”.
“@MunCorpGurugram. We are wondering how the quarantine would start from 4th of June, 2020?, (sic)” a tweet by @rude_front stated.
Over the last month, MCG officials said they have pasted ‘home under quarantine’ stickers outside 6,900 houses across the city.
“Regarding pasting of stickers outside incorrect addresses, it needs to be remembered that the MCG is only assisting the district administration and health department for this objective. We receive a quarantine list from the health department based on which we paste stickers outside people’s houses. We do not have a mechanism in place for corroborating or verifying the information. On the matter of incorrect dates, there have been several cases of a clerical error from our end which we are in the process of rectifying,” said a senior MCG official, privy to the matter.
Ashish Singla, medical officer and nodal officer of the MCG for Covid-19, declined to comment on the matter.
However, MCG commissioner Vinay Pratap Singh said, “The quarantine list was provided by the health department and we have asked them to review it.
JS Punia, chief medical officer (CMO), Gurugram, said that an updated quarantine list is being prepared. “We are preparing the updated quarantine list to check if there were any errors in the database regarding the name or the address of the person under quarantine and accordingly rectify it. In addition, we will also be updating the list to create a separate database of those whose quarantine period is now over and the MCG can now go to their residences and remove the stickers,” said Punia.
As per MCG officials, a quarantine list from the health department is divided into four categories depending on the number of houses falling under each MCG zone. Each joint commissioner of the MCG is then tasked with the responsibility of getting their staff to paste these stickers, which are usually done by members from the sanitation, taxation, or establishment wings.
