Corpn e-passes for workers entering city

Corpn e-passes for workers entering city

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

4.8.2020

Greater Chennai Corporation has come up with a new scheme for e-pass for guest workers returning to Chennai from other states and other districts of Tamil Nadu.

Corporation commissioner G Prakash said companies employing the workers have to apply for e-passes after providing their particulars. “The company has to indicate the exact number of workers who are coming and get an e-pass for each of them,” Prakash said.

Apart from this, the companies will have to create quarantine facilities for such workers in the city. “They will have to build some kind of shed where the arriving employees can be quarantined. We understand that it cannot be a very high quality facility, but it has to be suitable with proper facilities like toilets,” Prakash said. These facilities will be inspected by local corporation officials and given approval, he said. “Already we have started giving permissions to some companies who have approached us,” Prakash said.

All employees will be quarantined and they have to stay put during the 14-day period and also undergo testing, the commissioner said. “In case they have symptoms, they would have to report to us and undergo the treatment cycle,” he said. “This is one line of defence.”

Prakash said the corporation was approving 1,000 e-passes on a daily basis. He said Covid-19 prevention and detection activities would continue for at least three more months and complete relaxation of lockdown right now was difficult.

“The number of people wearing masks has improved, 90% are using it and it is a good sign. However, maintaining physical distancing is turning out to be difficult in some places. We will implement it as far as possible,” Prakash, who inaugurated a free quarantine centre at a hotel in Velachery along with health secretary J Radhakrishnan, said.

EXODUS: Thousands of guest workers left Chennai after the outbreak of Covid-19