Police to be deployed at all vaccination centres in Pune to manage crowds, maintain law and order
Amid complaints of mismanaging the vaccination drive and political interference at vaccination centres, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) on Tuesday decided to deploy police at all vaccination centres.
“The ward medical officer or the Assistant Municipal Commissioner should get the local police deployed at the vaccination centres in their respective area to maintain law and order situation along with managing the crowd,” said Municipal Commissioner Vikram Kumar.
The civic administration has been receiving complaints about the poor implementation of the vaccination programme with residents across the city objecting to interference from local corporators. According to the complaints, corporators were favouring certain citizens who were then receiving the vaccine doses ahead of others. Local corporators were also doing publicity stunts near vaccination centres.
There have also been several incidents of beneficiaries being turned by vaccination centres because vaccines were finished for the day. All vaccination centres have been witnessing large crowds and there have been incidents of people getting into arguments with civic staff, political activists as well as other beneficiares at vaccination centres. Social distancing norms have not been scrupulously followed at vaccination centres.
Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar had instructed the civic administration not to allow any political leader or activist interfere with the vaccination drive.
If any person is found to carry the vaccine vial outside the centre, then an offence should be registered at the nearest police station, he said, adding that there legal action should be taken against any person creating obstacles at the vaccination centre.
The municipal commissioner said there should not be any advertising boards or posters by any organisation or person other than that of the central government, state government and municipal commissioner.
“No citizen other than the beneficiary should be allowed to enter the premises of the vaccination centre,” he said, adding that there should be adequate publicity on the status of vaccine availability on the CoWin portal and the respective vaccination centre on a daily basis.
Assistance should be provided at each centre for citizens to enroll for the vaccination drive as no vaccine can be administered to a person not registered on the CoWin portal. “The PMC will inoculate eligible citizens, mainly beggars, senior citizens at old age homes, mentally disturbed persons, jail inmates, religious leaders and saints, who do not possess any identity card, in a special drive and the list of such eligible citizens should be prepared and submitted to the civic health department,” he added.
“Priority should be given to differently-abled eligible citizens at vaccination centres, followed by those scheduled for the second dose of the vaccine, senior citizens, registered beneficiaries for the first dose and on the spot registered citizens for the first dose,” he said.
On the spot registration should be done only by civic staff and they should be in a queue separate from those beneficiaries who registered online. Tokens should be issued only by civic staff at the centre and vaccinations should begin at 10 am.
As many as 9.45 lakh vaccine doses have been administered in the city so far with 2.5 lakh beneficiaries getting both doses while 4.45 lakh have received the first dose. Vaccination was closed for two days due to unavailability of doses and it will resume Wednesday only for those above 45 years of age.
