Nagpur: With daily Covid cases declining drastically, the Nagpurians have gone careless. They have almost forgotten the mandatory wearing of masks while roaming outdoors. The Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) too has gone lethargic in its action against those violating Covid appropriate behaviour.
One would find a large number of citizens can be seen throwing caution to the wind by failing to wear face masks at markets and other public places. The overall laxity can be further gauged from the fact that in January 2022, the Nuisance Detection Squad (NDS) of NMC caught only 1,638 citizens without masks, though most people can be seen not wearing masks. This number further reduced to 1,229 in February, reveals the data obtained of fined citizens.
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Saturday 28 Sept. 2024
Lame excuses:
Earlier, the NDS team and city police had been acting tough against those flouting Covid norms, especially for not wearing masks. However, now it has become common to see people venturing out without masks, or pulling it down to their chin as the NMC has begun to look the other way.
According to the NDS, many violators give excuses that they forgot the mask at home, while some bring it out from their bags when caught. It seems now the public has no fear of contracting the viral infection, said the NMC squad. A citizen, who was penalized for not wearing a mask, questioned the selectiveness of the authorities in punishing commoners while turning a blind to the violations by politicians, most of whom can be seen mingling in public without following the Covid appropriate behaviour. Though the State Government has granted many relaxations related to Covid pandemic, it did not withdraw the mandate of wearing face masks while going out.
NDS action:
From September 2020 to March 3, 2022, the NDS team had caught 43,162 people who had ventured out without masks. The NDS team led by its Commandant Virsen Tambe has also recovered over Rs 1.99 crore fine from them. The NDS team has fined the maximum number of citizens without masks in the Dharampeth Zone. Here the NDS team penalized 6,997 people, while it was followed by Laxmi Nagar Zone, where the civic cops caught 6,091 citizens without masks.
