Authorities have decided to establish small quarantine centres in Panchayat Ghars across Kathua district to facilitate quarantine of people returning J&K from other states by road.
The entry point at Lakhanpur has become a central place where hundreds of J&K residents coming from other states reach every day.
“Presently, we are receiving people with high viral load at Lakhanpur, and 90 percent of them are asymptomatic,” Deputy Commissioner, Kathua, OP Bhagat, told Greater Kashmir.
He said: “We are facing problem to manage 6183 (among them only 100 are from outside Kathua) in 120 quarantine centres across the district. All these centres have capacity of over 1500. We have not much employees, and medical staff to manage them,” Bhagat said.
Since people are coming from infected states like Gujarat, Delhi, Maharashtra, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, he said, they have decided to take the help of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) and accommodate these people in small groups like 10, 20 or 25 in Panchayat Ghars in village who can be accommodated and looked after by the villagers and Panchayat members.
“Whosoever is coming are being sent to their respective districts, we are only keeping Kathua district residents,” Bhagat.
Today, over 1700 people arrived in Lakhanpur. “Among these, over 500 are Kathua residents,” he said.
He said the quarantine centres in urban areas of Kathua and Hiranagar are already full and now the centres in Billawar, Bani, Basohli, have also become full by the returnees.
Given this, “we were directed by Chief Secretary, BVR Subrahmanyam to involve Panchayat members in villages to keep the returnees in segregated places to keep 10 to 20 people, and Panchayats should be given responsibility to manage these small quarantine centres,” he said, during his visit to Basohli.
“To explore the possibilities, we had come to Basohli where we have received positive response from the Panchayat members, members of civil society and others people,” he said.
He said that returnees from the infected places will be kept in the Primary Schools, Panchayat Ghars, Higher Schools, and Higher Secondary Schools, where Panchayati Raj Members (Panchs and Sarpanchs) will provide them food and other needed things,” he said.
In these small centres, the government officials can also visit. “These returnees will be sampled from the main centre i.e. Lakhanpur and then, they will be shifted to the villages wherever the small centres would be established. In two – three days, we will get their medical reports,” he said.
“If it comes positive, only a small group will have to be retested for covid,” he said, adding that it would be safe method under the present circumstances. So far, 31 positive cases have been detected for covid19 in the district.