Chaos continues in Cachar; 98 air passengers in Silchar escape mandatory test, huge crowd at vaccination centres

Air passengers have a certain propensity to pay. Most of them are considered to be well educated and accomplished. “Since they are air passengers, we assumed they won’t need heavy deployment of Police officials to ensure rules are followed, however, we were wrong,” said ADC Cachar Sumit Sattavan as more than 300 passengers violated the norms and escaped without testing on Wednesday.

Thursday, the names of all the passengers who violated the government induced regulations were handed over to Police to take action. While it was assumed that the decisive action will prompt the inbound passengers to follow the norms, it didn’t happen on the ground.

Today, 511 passengers deboarded from the flights that landed on Silchar from outside Northeast. Most of the passengers were from Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi – all viral vectors. 76 of them got exemption after handing over undertaking. However, as many as 98 passengers escaped from the Tikal Model Hospital in Salganga without getting themselves tested.

As the number of passengers have increased with the increase of flights, the Cachar district administration, in order to decongest and declutter has decided to conduct the mandatory tests at nearby Tikal Model Hospital. RAT tests are performed first and those who test negative are asked to pay Rs 500 and their samples are collected for RT-PCR. It is happening at other parts of Assam too under the directive of Department of Health, Government of Assam.

Today, eight air passengers tested positive and it is possible that many among the 98 who escaped are carrier of the infection.

But why are air passengers refusing to cooperate? “I am looking into the data,” responds Deputy Commissioner of Cachar, Keerthi Jalli.

She adds, “However passengers did cooperate today. We are rectifying the system based on everyday experience. Those who are trying to flee, I hope they understand that by testing they are protecting their own family as family is the first line contact of a suspected positive. It is self serving to get tested.”

While it is a work in progress at Tikal, a much bigger mess is breaking everyday at the vaccination centres in Silchar. Both Civil Hospital and Urban PHC are witnessing huge crowds refusing to adhere to Covid protocols. One is standing on top of the other and refusing to listen to what the officials are saying.

“Today, we issued 250 tokens and asked the rest in the queue to go back to their home as we cannot administer more than 250 doses. They didn’t listen to us and turned unruly. They kept questioning, how we could ask them to go back as they were standing since 4:00 am. But there is very little that we can do,” said an official of the healthcare department.

Throughout the day, officials were announcing that all the people in queue must follow social distancing or else more people will get infected, but the general public didn’t listen to any. Police had to intervene and bring situation under control. There are NGOs too trying to help the healthcare workers.

Representatives of the NGOs said that even after explaining all minute details, the general public continued to create a ruckus. “Unless both stakeholders cooperate, the system will collapse. What is lacking at the moment is clear, concise communication from administration and cooperation from public. One day 50 doses are administered and the next day it becomes 250. Because of this variance, people standing in the queue remain clueless for the most part. Once communication is clear and the public cooperates, there won’t be an issue but otherwise, the vaccination centres can become viral vectors,” said member of an NGO.