Telangana: Meet over phased easing of lockdown soon, say officials

HYDERABAD: Senior government officials said instructions were issued by chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao to police to enforce the lockdown strictly with an intention to end it on May 30 and relax the restrictions in a phased manner.
Officials said KCR is likely to hold a review meeting on Covid-19 on May 28 or 29. From May 31 or June 1, the government may slowly relax the restrictions from four hours to six hours and impose only night curfew later. Some states like AP are implementing the lockdown between 12 noon to 6 am.
Health department officials said the number of cases per day in the state has fallen for the past one week and on Saturday, only 3,300 cases were reported. “The curve cannot be flattened immediately, but the number of cases can be brought down to below 1,000 within a week. If people start moving on roads, the situation may come back to square one. The government does not want such a scenario,” a senior official of CMO said.
Sources in the government recall that the CM was reluctant to impose lockdown in the state as it would directly impact the livelihood of several sectors and lakhs of workers apart from hitting the state’s revenues. The 20-hour lockdown is being implemented to break the chain and reduce the number of coronavirus infection cases.
“The government is prepared to lose revenue in view of the pandemic situation. People’s health gains credence over the state revenues,” a senior government official said and recalled that even the CM said the same during a review meeting with district collectors and SPs on Friday. “However, the government cannot go on extending the lockdown for several weeks, which may further worsen the situation. A situation may arise when the government will not be in a position to even pay salaries to the employees,” a CMO official said. The Telangana government clamped the lockdown on May 12 for 10 days and later extended till May 30. Only four hours — between 6 am and10 am — is given to people to purchase groceries and vegetables.
KCR expressed unhappiness over the implementation of lockdown in the state at Friday’s meeting and asked the police to crack the whip on violators of lockdown guidelines.