Five ministers to join Chennai’s Covid fight

CHENNAI: Foreseeing a further spike in cases in Greater Chennai Corporation in the coming days, the AIADMK government on Friday assigned five ministers to oversee coordination and relief work in the battle against the Covid-19 outbreak. The state capital recorded 19,826 cases till Friday, accounting for 70% of the total tally in the state, evoking criticism from the public and the opposition.
The government has carefully chosen the ‘light and heavy’ case load zones and distributed it among the ministers for Covid-19 work.“It is an action taken at the right time given the forecast of experts about rising number of cases. We will coordinate with the teams and do our best in containing the spread,” said D Jayakumar, who has been assigned Madhavaram and the two hotspots of Tondiarpet and Royapuram. The other ministers include K P Anbazhagan, R Kamaraj, R B Udayakumar and M R Vijayabaskar.
The roping in of the minister comes a day after DMK chief M K Stalin slammed the state for spike in cases in Chennai, whose case load exceeds the cumulative cases in states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. He wondered if the state knew that the cases in Royapuram alone were more than certain states. “The government failed to contain the spread with Koyambedu cluster being a classic case,” said former mayor and Saidapet MLA M Subramanian. Despite the DMK’s offer, the state did not utilise Kalaignar Arangam in Anna Arivalayam for Covid-19 quarantine.
The state has set up field support teams comprising 40 officials, including IAS and IPS officers, and a team of five senior IPS officers to support special nodal officer J Radhakrishnan, to ensure effective containment zone management, focused testing, effective contact tracing, isolation and quarantine management.
The state incentivises the people of densely populated areas to move to quarantine camps to maintain social distancing norms, and decentralised the contact tracing. But cases could not be contained.
“The ministers will provide leadership for the whole team and take care of the local needs and infrastructure,” said a senior government official.
The move may have been aimed at involving elected representatives, but the ministers should take the responsibility seriously at least now, said TNCC president K S Alagiri. “The government shirked its responsibility and allowed the Koyambedu market to remain open with lack of social distancing norms. There was no decentralisation plan and it failed. The administration should behave responsibly during disasters,” the Congress leader said.
Minister Anbazhagan will handle Adyar, Perungudi and Sholinganallur, Kamaraj Anna Nagar, Teynampet and Kodambakkam. Udayakumar has been assigned Tiruvottiyur, Manali and Thiru Vi Ka Nagar while M R Vijayabaskar is in charge of Ambattur, Valasaravakkam and Alandur.