Teachers my not be part of COVID vaccination drive in Ranchi

Jharkhand state government has announced that teachers may not be used in the COVID vaccination drive. Teachers have been deployed in significant numbers for COVID duty earlier, but their services are unlikely to be used during the first phase of the vaccination drive.

School premises, however, may be utilised during the mass vaccination drive. A local official has issued a letter to several schools in the Badagai area of Ranchi asking the management to keep four rooms ready for the purpose.

When contacted, senior officers in the education department said they were not aware of any move by the government to deploy teachers for the vaccination drive.

State health secretary Dr Nitin Madan Kulkarni said, “The Covid vaccination drive would be carried out by trained personnel. Staff from other wings may be deployed for supervision but we are not deploying the teachers during the initial phase.”

One official said that they were not in a position to spare the teachers since the preparations for Class X and Class XII board examinations were going on.

In fact, sources said that a letter has been issued to the district commissioners to withdraw the teachers from Covid activity so that they could join their core work.

Notably, teachers were posted at various Covid centres in the past.

In a related development, the government has also sought the list of teachers who have been posted on Covid duties so that they could be vaccinated.

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