Bengaluru has been reporting a record-high number of cases over the past few days, which has sent the government into a mode of quick action. As the top tiers of the state government discuss the way forward, in a new development on Thursday in an order issued by Chief Secretary Vijay Bhaskar, 8 zonal officers have been appointed to help manage the pandemic in Bengaluru.
Bengaluru gets 8 zonal officers
An order instating the 8 IAS officers to different zones in Bengaluru came on Thursday in the light of a rise in cases. The move comes as pressure builds on the CM to impose a lockdown or not.
The order signed by Vijay Bhaskar, Chief Secretary of Karnataka states, "Exercising powers under the Disaster Management Act 2005, the State Executive Committee is appointing these officers to effectively control the spread of COVID-19 in Bengaluru City."
As the state's infrastructure is under duress due to the sudden spike in cases, the government has assigned different zones to each IAS officer, each of them will oversee functions of zonal coordinators. They will make sure contact-tracing is done properly as well ask to make sure medical is meted out in an orderly fashion and hospital beds are assigned on time.
The Zonal commissioners are as follows for Bengaluru— Tushar Girinath (East Zone), Rajendra Kumar Kataria (West Zone), KP Manivannan (Bommanahalli Zone), Naveen Raj Singh (Yelahanka Zone), Munish Moudgil (South Zone), N Manjula (Mahadevapura Zone), PC Jaffer (Dasarahalli Zone) and R Vishal (Rajarajeshwari Nagar)
This move comes even as there is no automated system to allocate beds in the city. These commissioners will oversee the call centres as well which will resolve issues for citizens. Even as the cabinet meeting took place today, the state will not be going into lockdown as of now despite Bengaluru reporting over 12,000 cases of Coronavirus.
