Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) have begun to impose fresh curbs on movement of outsiders as the number of COVID-19 cases are on an upswing across the State, especially in the city.
Discouraging house-help services and leaving it to the discretion of households, food deliveries at the gate, blocking play areas, no entry without masks and limiting the movement of outsiders are some of the rules imposed from Thursday in a residential complex in Attapur. The complex has three households which have gone into self-imposed quarantine after family members tested positive for the virus.
“The house helps move from one house to another. Out of safety consideration, we have asked our house help to not work at our home for 15 days, assuring her that we will continue to pay her salary,” said a resident unwilling to go on record for privacy concerns.
Many other apartment complexes across the city have imposed similar curbs, according to food delivery executives. The fresh steps in limiting the movement of people in residential complexes come barely three months since the earlier curbs were loosened as the number of cases dropped from January 2021 in Telangana. Hand sanitiser bottles and notices about no-mask no-entry are again back in residential complexes.
“These harsh steps are not necessary. It is a knee-jerk reaction. Some RWAs are following what politicians are doing. No thought is given to what will happen to livelihoods if these unscientific curbs are imposed,” said Rao Chelikani, who heads an umbrella body of RWAs in the city. “I came to know about measures being imposed by residential colonies and we have counselled them against imposing any harsh measures which are counter-productive,” said Mr. Chelikani.
Incidentally, the State government is not notifying quarantined areas as per the protocol followed during the first wave of COVID-19 outbreak.
As the current wave of the pandemic rampages through the city, citizens are being forced to do their own intelligence-gathering and measures to prevent the spread of the disease.