Covid-19: Ramakrishna Mission join hands with city police to spread awareness

Sowbhagyalakshmi, Mar 26, 2020, 3:01 PM IST

Mangaluru: With the novel coronavirus said to be in the stage of community transmission, it is imperative to educate people about social distancing in order to break the chain of COVID-19. Towards this end, Ramakrishna Mission has joined hands with the city police and has created a “Team against Covid-19” WhatsApp group to come up with measures to spread awareness.

Speaking to Udayavani.com with this regard, a volunteer of Ramakrishna Mission Ranjan Bellarpadi, said, “Though we wanted to create awareness earlier we couldn’t come out due to the lockdown, but on Wednesday, March 25 District Commissioner Harsha contacted Swami Ekagamyanandaji, Vice President, Ramakrishna Math & Mission and said that despite lockdown orders people are still roaming on the streets. Therefore he asked us to help them create awareness with this read. So on Thursday, March 26 we held a meeting with the top police officials and came up with a few measures which will be implemented soon.”

Talking about the measure to be taken Ranjan said, “As far as eighty volunteers within the age group of 20 to 60 have been selected to assist the beat police of 12 police stations under city limits and these volunteers will be creating awareness along with the police starting from today. These volunteers will inform the people about the importance of social distancing. We will also teach people about the importance of sanitization and will make sure everyone wears a mask while coming out.”

“To discourage people from coming out on streets, we will adopt a shaming strategy wherein we will click photo of the person by making them hold placards. These photographs however will be shared only with the police,” he added.

Rajan further added, “We have decided to create awareness in the apartments of the city by asking each apartment to create a purchasing committee, wherein every family can give the list of essentials items to this committee. The members of the committee can go to a supermarket once in a week and get all the items on the list and distribute it. By following this the people can avoid crowd places and stay safe. However, we are waiting for the approval of the police department to implement the initiative.”

“Our volunteers will also visit the central market and educating people about the importance of social distancing. The volunteers will also be helping the police to manage the crowd in the market,” he informed.

Further speaking about the volunteers he said, “Despite the risk, many people wanted to be a part of Team against Covid-19, but we have only selected 80 volunteers keeping in mind the lockdown rules. We have also made sure that the volunteers who will help us are between the age group of 20 to 60 as the people below 20 and above 60 are at high risk of being infected with Covid-19.”

As we all know Swacchata Abhiyan initiated by Ramakrishna Mission on request from Govt. of India in 2014 had completed five successful phases recently and now they are all set to help the city police control the spread of novel coronavirus. They have also proved that as most of them across the country, and around the world, shelter in the safety of their homes, there are always people who are willing to step up to the plate and help.