A resident said that he had written on Twitter to the authorities on April 12 that the curfew was not being followed in Sector 30B in Chandigarh. (Express File Photo by Kamleshwar Singh)

There has been an utter failure of the administration as they did not pay heed to several complaints that curfew was not being taken seriously in Sector 30B, alleged residents and the local councillor after five people were tested positive in the sector.

Local councillor Devinder Singh Babla said that the screening done by the health department was a complete eyewash.

“Even if the area was sealed, residents were roaming freely inside. They were having normal morning and evening walks. The curfew was not being implemented properly. After sealing, even these officers did not go inside to check whether people were roaming freely. This belt has 5,000 people,” he said.

He added, “I pointed out several times that the screening of people is an eyewash. The health department just comes once and asks in the locality of 1,000 people if anyone had cough, fever or other symptoms.”

The councillor said that he enquired from one of the infected persons who said that they had gone to GMCH-32 for a routine check-up on April 12.

A resident who didn’t wish to be quoted said that he had written on Twitter to the authorities on April 12 that the curfew was not being followed. Several other requests were made to the police to patrol the area.

Later in the afternoon, a letter was written to UT Administrator V P Singh Badnore.

“As you are aware, the way the whole world has been entangled in the pandemic of Covid-19 has literally affected all the states of India and created panic amongst the countrymen. Chandigarh, rightly called as the city beautiful, is also entangled in the pandemic and panic of corona… We need to take concrete measures to break the chain and if this is not controlled or there is an outbreak, then things will be out of control for all of us. Every day new cases are coming up in my ward Sector 30, despite the sealing of the sector done by the Administration,” the letter says.