BENGALURU: The Bengaluru police and district administration is involving more citizen volunteers to complement their efforts to tackle the covid-19 pandemic during the week-long lockdown in the city. Volunteers would help authorities increase community engagement, bridge trust deficit and mitigate shortage of personnel in the long drawn battle against covid-19.
The invite for volunteers by Bengaluru police commissioner, Bhaskar Rao, on Twitter got over 6,000 likes and nearly 2000 retweets.
“This way the community also understands what happens at our level and we can concentrate on core duties," said a senior police official, requesting not to be named.
Officials say that citizens sometimes nurse feelings of being unfairly targeted during lockdowns and this attempt can give them an understanding of the on-gound situation and their battle against a formidable virus.
The invite to volunteers comes at a time when Bengaluru reimposed a week-long lockdown as it now has over 20,000 covid-19 positive cases of which 15,599 are active and accounts for 378 out of the total 848 fatalities across Karnataka.
With the growing number of cases, various state governments and district administrations of large cities across the country are hoping to involve the community in not only helping ease the strain on already overstretched resources but also seek to remove the stigma attached to the virus which has manifested itself in ways that adversely impact efforts.
Authorities are also looking to garner public support and participation to be more forthcoming in revealing not just covid-19 symptoms without fear of being ostracised but also help contact tracing efforts as well as encourage others to remain indoors.
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP, the city’s civic body) has also invited volunteers as part of its hyperlocal strategy that involves citizens, resident welfare associations and others to work with government authorities for contact tracing that is proving to be one of the biggest challenges in the battle to contain the spread.
In the last week, Bengaluru has reported 9608 new cases, the source of infection in majority of them are unknown and that further fuels fears on the possibility of a full blown community transmission that could prolong the cautionary measures to be followed by the nearly 15 million residents of India’s technology capital.
Several interested candidates took to twitter to seek more information on the offer, especially if they will be provided medical assistance if they test positive while volunteering.
A valid concern considering the recent chaos around securing hospital beds.
“No volunteer will be posted outside containment zones," the official cited above said. He added that this is pro-bono work without remuneration and there will be no standalone duties for any volunteer but only used to support civilians but will only be used to support the police.
Volunteers have been actively involved in supporting distribution of food and rations during the earlier lockdown phases.
Activists and citizens also raised concerns if this could lead to moral policing and vigilantism as was seen in different parts of the country during the earlier versions of the lockdown.
Several activists, residents and others had complained of high-handedness by the police to enforce the lockdown by using violence, especially against delivery boys and other workers.
In the early days of the lockdown in April and May, videos of police personnel wielding lathis on motorists and others had gone viral. However, the police quickly tried more creative tools including humour to spread awareness and keep people indoors--a strategy that has worked to a large extent. More citizen engagement is only likely to help.
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