With active cases in city coming down, the Greater Chennai Corporation has decided to terminate the services of volunteers from non-governmental organisations who were deployed in slum areas to carry out preventive measures against COVID-19.
Chennai:
In June, when the number of cases reported every day was on the rise, the civic body had signed a memorandum of understanding with 92 NGOs to participate in the Community Intervention Programme (CIP).
“The programme was launched at the community level in 1,979 densely populated areas. As many as 2,300 outreach workers, who are members of NGOs, were deployed in those locations,” said a Corporation official.
When asked the reason for terminating the services of outreach workers, an official said that the agreement with the NGOs would end on September 19 and the civic body would not renew it.
An official clarified that the field workers, number more than 12,000, who were appointed to conduct door-to-door fever survey would continue to work in their respective areas. “But we will phase out the number of survey workers based on the reduction of positive cases. We have malaria workers (DBC workers) and Corporation contract workers, so the COVID-19 prevention works will not be affected,” the official said.