Corona cases disrupt work at Kolkata civic headquarters

KOLKATA: A 40-year-old employee of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation finance and accounts department died of Covid-19 on Saturday. Another employee from the caretaker’s department has also tested positive.
Functions of all departments at the headquarters came to a standstill on Saturday morning in absence of KMC caretaker’s department personnel who are entrusted with unlocking all department rooms. Even officials in the mayor’s office were taken aback to see the locked room when they turned up on Saturday morning. Later, a staffer in the mayor’s office could finally locate the keys in the caretaker’s department and unlocked the room.
However, visitors who queued up at the birth and death registration counters at the headquarters had a difficult time as they waited for hours but the counters could not be opened for want of keys. “It is true that we could not open the counters and that led to a confusion among the visitors and a subsequent harassment. We hope to tide over the crisis by Monday morning,” a KMC health department official said on Saturday.
A junior assistant at the caretaker’s department tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday and he was sent to KPC Roy Medical College hospital for treatment. Caretaker Dipankar Dutta and other employees of the department who had come in regular contact with the junior assistant were sent to home quarantine. “Amid such a situation, there was skeleton manpower in the department who could not muster courage to unlock so many rooms at the headquarters. The result was obvious. Functions of several key departments were hampered. We hope to start normal functions from Monday morning,” said a KMC official.