The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is keeping a special eye on the H west (HW) ward as the city recorded a spike in the number of Covid-19 cases. The HW ward covers the areas Bandra west, Santacruz and Khar in the western suburbs and presently, this ward has the highest growth rate in the city and lowest doubling rate.
As per the latest BMC data, there are 326 active cases and in the past one week and between February 14 and February 20, a total of 285 cases have been reported from this ward.
Civic officials have stated, most of the cases are being reported from the residential buildings and they have tightened the surveillance on ground level to ensure the Covid-19 protocols are followed safely.
"Most of the new infections are people who have recently added weddings and parties and have started going out for partying," said a senior civic official.
As a result to put the violators on check, the BMC have started heavy crackdown in the pubs, restaurants and banquet halls. In the last weekend, the civic body had also registered FIRs against a multiple popular restaurants and pubs for not maintaining protocols.
Deputy Municipal Commissioner - Parag Masurkar stated, similar crackdown will continue to take place unless the situation is in control.
"After lockdown-relaxations were imposed across the city, people had this belief that pandemic is gone but its still there and to keep a check against those flouting the norms, crackdowns will continue," Masurkar told FPJ.
"The idea of penalising business entities is not for earning money but to state example so that people starts following rules," he added.
Alongside the pubs civic officials have also kept a strict surveillance on the open spaces like - Bandra Bandstand and Carter Road Promenade. The local ward office has deployed a significant number of clean up marshals in these areas to fine anyone without a face mask in a public space.
Between February 20 and 22, the clean up marshals have fined total 1,533 people from this ward generating around Rs 3.06 lakh in fine amounts.
"We have fined more than 50 per cent of the violators were fined at the open spaces and the remaining were fined outside restaurants and pubs, most of them had come to these place from satelite cities and were not local residents," said a civic official.
Civic officials furthermore stated that more than 70 per cent of the population reside in residential buildings and slums and as a result, they have started conducting fever camps at residential buildings and housing societies like how they were doing it when the pandemic was at its peak last year.
To strengthen the mass outreach, they have also roped in members of Advanced Locality Management (ALM) groups.
