Districts ask for more volunteers at city’s hotspots

Civil defence volunteers are not bound by any contract, and are paid an emolument of around Rs 730 for a day’s duty. Their enrolment is a round-the-year process, but they receive calls from the departments when their services are needed.

With the number of containment zones across the national capital consistently rising, the district administrations have written to the revenue department, asking for more civil defence volunteers to be allotted to them, a senior Delhi government official said on Friday.

A health worker collects a swab sample for coronavirus testing, at Rajendra Nagar in New Delhi.(Sanchit Khanna/ Hindustan Times)

On October 1, Delhi recorded 2,615 containment zones up from 846 a month ago. In the same period, active Covid-19 cases in Delhi increased from 15,870 to 26,738, as per the Delhi government’s daily health bulletins.

Civil defence volunteers help district officials check violation of containment norms in the sealed zones and ensure the doorstep delivery of essentials to the residents there. 

“All resources of the districts have been engaged in Covid-19 management. At this point, having more helping hands would really help,” said a revenue department official, who asked not to be named.

Delhi is sanctioned around 238,000 civil defence volunteers, the official said.

However, he said, the city has only 46,000 enrolled volunteers, of whom around 22,000 are on active duty across departments.

Currently, the revenue department has the highest number of civil defence volunteers with it — around 8,500. Of the total, at least 7,000 are engaged only on Covid-19 management. The transport department has around 7,000 civil defence volunteers with it as of now, said the official.

Delhi’s revenue minister Kailash Gahlot said, “Civil defence volunteers play a major role in management of containment zones across the city. In the coming days, we are looking forward to recruit more of them and engaging them in the fight against Covid-19.”

Civil defence volunteers are not bound by any contract, and are paid an emolument of around Rs 730 for a day’s duty. Their enrolment is a round-the-year process, but they receive calls from the departments when their services are needed. The volunteers also help traffic police in managing traffic or ensure social distancing on the roads.

The most active volunteers in terms of service are often prioritised.

In the last one year, the government engaged over 5,000 civil defence volunteers in the rescue and rehabilitation of victims of the communal violence in north-east Delhi and implementation of the odd-even road space rationing scheme to reduce pollution.