MARGAO
Come Saturday, and the Margao Urban Health Centre will play host to Covid vaccination for 110 persons with 18-plus age.
The Centre, housing in a heritage building is already playing host to vaccination for people aged 45 years and above and is a centre for the collection of home isolation kits for the Covid positive patients from Margao and Fatorda.
A visit to the Margao Urban Health Centre reveals the bitter truth that the centre hardly meets the social distancing norms when it is executing a host of functions, ranging from vaccination and distribution of home isolation kits.
Resultantly, citizens are forced to stand in a congested environment, where social distancing norms are thrown to the winds for want of adequate space for the people to assemble.
That’s not all. People have to undergo the ordeal of standing in a serpentine queue for the vaccination or collection of home isolation kits under the scorching sun. Till date, however, the district administration is yet to erect a pandal and provide seating arrangements outside the building.
The Goan understands that the health centre had written to the district authorities to put up a pandal for the benefit of the citizens. Sources informed when a contractor had quoted Rs 1.75 lakh to put up the pandal and chairs for a period of six months, the Director of Health Services is believed to have abandoned the proposal.
While citizens standing under the scorching sun is a daily feature outside the Margao Urban Health Centre, questions are being raised in health circles how the centre will accommodate hundreds of citizens during the ensuing monsoons when the vaccination as well as distribution of home isolation kits is set to continue for the next couple of months.
As far as vaccination for 18-plus citizens is expected to take place on the first floor, vaccination in the age group of 45-59 and distribution of home isolation kits will continue to take place on the congested ground floor, in violation of the Covid norms.
A middle-aged citizen, who had come for vaccination at the Margao UHC on Friday, wondered why the private enterprise has shied away from providing the shelter for the people outside the centre.
