345 Chennai Corporation staff infected so far, 50 recovered

Chennai

“We have been taking several measures to safeguard the conservancy workers, including providing them masks (daily), gloves and medicines. Of around 20,000 conservancy workers in the city, only 120 are affected,” said Corporation Commissioner G Prakash.

He added that nearly 50 employees of the civic body have recovered from the virus infection so far. The civic body, along with the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC), is operating 95 buses to ferry conservancy workers to their workplaces. Overall, the civic body has distributed 46.25 lakh disposable masks to the conservancy workers.

Prakash added that the average generation of garbage in the city has come down after the lockdown. Earlier, the civic body was collecting 5,200 tonnes of garbage, which came down to only 3,200 tonnes after the lockdown.

“We are also conducting camps for the workers to identify symptoms. We are providing full salary to the infected workers even if they are not able to attend work,” he added.

Meanwhile, the civic body had collected 202 tonnes of waste from the quarantined houses and disposed them at the burial grounds. As on Wednesday, 1,88,588 persons were sent to quarantine. On Wednesday alone, 22,974 persons were sent to quarantine.

Also, the civic body has increased the number of samples being tested in the city to reach around 10,000 samples per day.