New Delhi: Despite the fact that it might sound funny, but the idea of placing several cutouts of langurs in a bid to keep monkeys away from the premises of Sardar Patel Covid Care Centre (SPCC) turned out very effective. The covid care centre located in Radha Soami Beas in Delhi’s Chhattarpur and said to be India’s largest Covid care facility has been facing monkey menace ever since its inauguration.
Sources said that in the past few days before the cutouts were placed, SPCC witnessed troupes of monkeys roaming around, occasionally getting angry and attacking the personnel deployed, specifically people who are deployed in PPE kits. And to avoid such incidents, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) came up with the idea of placing the langur cutouts. These cutouts are randomly rotated daily to the new places across the centre so that the monkey groups can not guess these being static and are not real, sources added.
The covid care centre located in Radha Soami Beas in Delhi’s Chhattarpur and said to be India’s largest Covid care facility has been facing monkey menace.
“In the past few days, it was seen that monkey groups roam and sometimes become aggressive and try to attack the personnel deployed to look after the covid care centre specifically people who are deployed in PPE kits,” said ITBP spokesperson Vivek Pandey.
“The cutouts of langurs seem to be very effective as of now and monkey groups are somehow keeping away from entering the premises once these cutouts were placed,” he said.
The centre is 1,700 feet long and 700 feet wide– roughly the size of 20 football fields– and had 200 enclosures with 50 beds each. The Covid-19 facility was closed down in February when coronavirus cases in the capital had reduced significantly. It was revived again in April considering the unprecedented surge in cases.