E-Paper
Shelters for homeless turn into Covid-19 quarantine facilities, swab centres in Pune
These shelter include Jyotiba Phule School on Dhole Patil road; Anusuya Bai Sawant School in Ganeshnagar, Yerawada; and Krantiveer Lahuji Vastad Salve E-learning School in Mother Teresanagar in Yerawada
The shelter for homeless labourers and beggars near Tadiwala road under Dhole Patil road ward and Lakshminagar under Yerawada ward office jurisdiction of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) areas have been turned into institutional Covid-19 (coronavirus) quarantine facilities or swab centres.
These shelter include Jyotiba Phule School on Dhole Patil road; Anusuya Bai Sawant School in Ganeshnagar, Yerawada; and Krantiveer Lahuji Vastad Salve E-learning School in Mother Teresanagar in Yerawada.
Subhash Satav, the PMC official looking after the school-based shelter homes in Yerawada-Kalas-Dhanori area, said, “The number of people at the shelter homes is the same. Maybe one or two went away, but those many got added too.”
The people living in shelters in Yerawada were taken to optional facilities either in Fatimanagar or Aundh, according to Satav.
Other centres being readied to serve as quarantine centres include- Colonel Young School and Dr Nanasaheb Parulekar School, both in Yerawada.
In Dhole Patil road area, the local administration has asked for two facilities - Shantabai Ladkat School and a hall in Wadia College - to remain on standby as holding centres for negative cases.
According to Dayanand Sonkamble, assistant municipal commissioner working in Dhole Patil Ward, “There are over 150 positive cases in Tadiwala road. The close contacts of these cases are being taken to the swab centre. The positive cases will be sent for treatment immediately and the negative ones will be kept in observation for some time in either Ladkat school or a hall in Wadia College.”
Rajender Kumar, 30, a native of a town in Basarahi village in Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, said, “We have filled out forms when they were made available. The company where we work is located in Tulapur. We walked from there to here because buses were shut and then we found that the trains were shut down too. If we get to Lucknow, we will make our way home. Just send us home.”
He is accompanied by three others who were living in Jyotiba Phule School and are now stationed at Kasturba Gandhi School in Koregaon Park along with close to 120 others. There are labourers from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh in these shelters.
While the city administration is dealing with the increasing number of Covid-19 cases, the health officials require more space to quarantine suspected patients. The city administration is turning to spaces used as shelters for homeless and migrant labourers. In the form of hope for the labourers, however, the special trains for migrant labourers have begun.
