COVID-19: Civic panels formed in Bengaluru to ensure citizens follow guidelines

Bengaluru: Civic committees in Bengaluru will now ensure that people strictly follow the wearing of face masks and maintain social distancing at public places.

In order to check the spread of coronavirus in the city, which is the major contributor of fresh COVID-19 cases in the state, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (city corporation) commissioner N Manjunatha Prasad on Tuesday ordered the constitution of the committees at various levels.

These committees are the BBMP head office committee, zonal level committees, divisional, and ward level committees.

These committees will include a health officer, an engineer of the BBMP, and a police officer nominated by the Bengaluru police commissioner.

Noting that the Health Department’s directives were blatantly violated by the citizens, Prasad noted that more stringent measures were required by the BBMP and the police to ensure zero violation in COVID-19 guidelines such as mandatory mask-wearing and social distancing at public places.

The BBMP has been imposing a penalty of Rs 250 for every such wilful violation and has engaged 220 Marshals, yet it has not yielded the desired results, sources said.

According to the order, the Divisional Level Committee will meet once a week to monitor and guide the ward level committees in enforcing the COVID-19 related directions.

Similarly, the zonal committees will meet every week to monitor the enforcement at the respective zones and the committee at the head office will also meet to review the enforcement in the entire city.

Each committee will send a detailed report to the next level in terms of the compliance of the direction, the Commissioner said in his order.