Bhubaneswar: In view of rising COVID-19 cases in the city, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) collaborated with Unicef for strategising and orienting its sanitation workers deployed in field for their personal safety and hygiene.
Termed WASH (Water Sanitation and Hygiene), the program kicked off in the in the North Zone of the BMC ward where 157 sanitation workers were trained. The training which included detailed information on COVID-19 also promoted social distancing, informing, health department and administration if found symptomatic and methods to deal with people with symptoms and people in quarantine.
“Resource persons of civil society organisation CORE (Cooperation for Rural Exelence) are orienting the participants. This capacity building is being organised to encourage sanitation workers for adopting safety behaviour to fight COVID-19 out,” said BMC Commissioner Prem Chandra Chaudhary.
Total number 2700 sanitation workers will be trained on WASH in this context during the coming weeks on a daily basis, excluding holidays or lockdown days. Looking at shutdown and government guidelines and daily duties of sanitation workers, ward wise on spot orientations have been planned so that no one would be left behind, sources said.
Addressing the kick off programme, Zonal District Commissioner, Pramod Kumar Prusty said, “All the sanitation partners have been informed and sanitation duties of the groups trained were planned accordingly so that sanitation work of any area is not compromised. Training was conducted in three wards of the zone.”