Senseless civic staff throw Coronavirus norms to wind

Concerning Non-Agriculture Properties Updation of Records which is underway in Telangana, the municipal officials have already started visiting the individual houses of residents to collect the data related to non-agricultural property for the stated reason, among others, that after this updating process, mutation of names of owners in various departments concerned is going to be easier post transfer of properties at the execution of the registration itself.

However praiseworthy might be the government's objectives, not to speak of distracters' allegation about secrecy issues, it is highly questionable and objectionable for the municipal officials to enter the houses and interview the occupants on the private premise albeit in the line of duty especially in times of coronavirus at its peak stage of spreading infection.

Many residents who are the owners or tenants are in their advanced age with comorbidities confined to home in isolation. Their own children are keeping themselves away lest they contact the virus to their elders. Now in the wake of the extant project on these premises, the elders and children will be sitting ducks in their own homes which is otherwise septic or isolated now being thrown open for contamination thanks to the visits of the municipal officials. Both sides are susceptible to get contacted with the deadly virus.

The staff could be carriers of the virus as unwitting pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic positive patients more so by their contacting with scores of such residents already in the course of duty and thus become potential super spreaders.

Why this public unhygienic campaign escaped the attention of the powers that be including the judiciary who could have taken notice of the same suo moto since they themselves are likewise vulnerable as likely owners of properties in Telangana. Let print and visual media take up the hygiene concerns and protocols of the vulnerable target population that comprises even everyone including the municipality machinery updating the records in their door-to-door ambitious and untimely project.

- Seshu Chamarty, Hyderabad