414 O2 cylinders land up for refill in 2 days

Ghaziabad: Two days after the district authorities started an initiative to refill oxygen cylinders used by patients in home isolation, officials said, they have received 414 empty cylinders from residents. They have also refilled and handed over 238 cylinders that came in on the first day.
According to officials, the cylinders were refilled within 24 hours, although the time limit had been fixed between 36 and 48 hours.
With several residents desperately looking for oxygen, the district administration, on Wednesday, launched the initiative and set up collection points where people could drop off empty cylinders so that they could be refilled and returned for use.
Collection points have been set up at each of the five municipal zones across the city. Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation (GMC) is executing the plan and GMC commissioner Mahendra Singh Tanwar has been appointed as the nodal officer for overseeing the oxygen supply process.
On Wednesday, 238 residents had registered and received coupons and on Thursday, 176 people applied for refilling.
The maximum number of registration was done in Vasundhara zone (171 residents). It was followed by City zone (88) and Mohan Nagar zone (71), respectively. Coupons were given to people after checking documents, like a patient’s Covid report and doctor’s prescription. Sandeep Tyagi, a resident of Saddik Nagar, who got a refilled cylinder within 24 hours, said the process was smooth. “We were facing a lot of problems while getting cylinders for my 35-year-old sister-in-law whose oxygen level dropped to 70. Earlier, we wasted an entire day waiting at a refilling agency in Lal Kuan,” he said.