Odisha appoints senior IAS officers as COVID-19 observers in charge of districts

Ahead of the arrival ofabout 5 lakh migrant workers stranded in different states due to lockdown imposed to contain COVID-19 pandemic, Odisha government has set up dedicated teams of bureaucrats to look after specific areas.Additional Chief Secretary P K Mohapatra has been appointed in charge of the Health and Family Welfare department, officials said.As many as 57 IAS, IPS and IFS officers have been entrusted with specific responsibilities while all the government officials beginning from Tehsildar to DGP are engaged in the war against coronavirus.An official release said that 22 IAS officers have been given responsibilities of 30 districts while a team of 2 IAS, 3 IPS and 1 IFS officer will look after registration of the migrant workers coming from other states. The team will also monitor the call centre set up for the migrant workers, it said.P K Mohapatra, who has the vast experience in the health sector, will function as the ACS, H&FW department while the existing department secretary N B Dhal will work as usual in his position.Mohapatra was appointed in the H&FW department to meet the requirement of massive coordination work with other states and the Centre for the return of migrant workers, students, professionals, pilgrims and patients stranded in different places across the country.Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has been taking stock of the corona situation on a day-to-day basis and has directed appointment of senior IAS officers as COVID-19 observers to various districts, a statement said.State governments COVID-19 spokesperson Subroto Bagchi has said that the state will take its fight to Stage-4 against Coronavius after arrival of migrant workers.He clarified that tackling the foreign returnees was stage-I of the fight while containing the spread of the virus after return of the Nizamuddin participants was the Stage-II and West Bengal returnees created ground for Stage-III fight. Now, containing the spread after arrival of the migrant workers will be the Stage-IV fight, he said.The official statement said that IAS officers Anu Garg and N Tirumala Nayak are given the charge of Bhubaneswar City which reported the highest 46 COVID-19 cases while MS Padhi and Ratnakar Rout will look after two other hotspots Balasore and Bhadrak districts.Similarly, Saurabh Garg and Susanta Mohapatra are assigned the responsibility of Cuttack City and Cuttack Rural while Surendra Kumar and Srikant Prusty will look after Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar districtsG Mathivathanan and Krishan Kumar are given charge of Ganjam and Gajapati districts while Hemant Sharma and Suresh Chandra Dalai given the charge of Jajpur, Jagatsinghpur and Kendrapara districts.Bishnupada Sethi and Gopabandhu Satpathy will look after Angul, Deogarh and Dhenkanal districts while Sushil Kumar Lohani and Benudhar Behera given charge of Bolangir, Bargarh and Nuapada districts.Saswata Mishra and Bishnu Prasad Mishra are given Kalahandi, Kandhamal and Boudh districts while V.V. Yadav and Rashid Khan will look after Koraput, Malkangiri, Rayagada and Nabarangpur districts.Anil Kumar Samal has been given the charge of Nayagarh, Puri, Cuttack Rural, Khordha Rural while Niranjan Sahu assigned the responsibilities of Sambalpur, Sonepur, Jharsuguda, Sundargarh districts.Meanwhile, the total number of COVID-19 patients in Odisha increased to 108 with Balasore reporting five more fresh cases on Monday.Of the 108 cases, Khurda including Bhubaneswar reported 46 cases followed by Jajpur with 18, Bhardak-16, Balasore, 15, Sundergarh-6, two each in Kalahandi and Kendrapara and one each from Cuttack, Puri and Dhenkanal.

Odisha appoints senior IAS officers as COVID-19 observers in charge of districts

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