Don’t ignore elected people’s representatives, mayor to Mundhe

Nagpur: Mayor Sandip Joshi on Thursday said the Nagpur Municipal Corporation has ignored elected representatives while taking measures to fight Covid-19 pandemic. “Had the administration taken the corporators into confidence to declare containment zones and quarantining suspected people, the city’s coronavirus cases could have been lesser,” said Joshi.
He called for coordination between the administration and the people’s representatives in fight against Covid-19.
Joshi on Thursday had convened the first-ever review meeting with municipal commissioner Tukaram Mundhe on Covid-19 arrangements, water scarcity and other city related issues. The meeting witnessed heated exchanges with senior corporators cutting across political parties. They expressed anguish over “civic chief ignoring elected representatives”.
Most of the senior corporators complained about “mismanagement” in arranging facilities at quarantine centres across the city.
Former mayor and MLC Pravin Datke said that NMC failed to provide food at shelter homes where thousands of migrants had stayed.
Leader of opposition Tanaji Wanve, senior congress corporator Praful Gudadhe, former deputy mayor Sandip Jadhav and others were present in the meeting which lasted for nearly three hours.
Wave, Gudadhe, Shiv Sena group leader Kishore Kumeriya, NCP corporator Duneshwar Pethe too pointed out there was lack of coordination on part of the administration with the corporators while charting out steps to contain the virus.
“Being elected representatives, citizens approach us. Without knowledge of any administrative decisions, we cannot solve their doubts,” said Wave and added, “had the NMC taken the corporators into confidence the measures against Covid-19 could have been more effective,” he said.
The civic body has been proactively picking up close contacts of positive patients across the city and compulsorily placing them into 14-day quarantine centres. Datke raised the issue of allegations regarding NMC adopting different yardsticks for institutional quarantine.
TOI on Thursday had reported that how NMC had quarantined common people for 14 days but applied different yardsticks for it officials who were quarantined only for a day.
Mundhe said that all the decisions were taken in the interest of people and in accordance with the guidelines issued by the government from time to time. “The decisions about containment zones too were as per the government guidelines,” he told the corporators.