All offices in Bhubaneswar must follow Covid norms or face closure: BMC

Bhubaneswar: All offices and establishments, both private and Government, in Bhubaneswar must ensure that their staff should be strictly following COVID-appropriate behaviour like wearing of face masks, maintaining hand hygiene and social distancing during working hours without fail, or else, BMC may have to go for closure of the violating offices.

It has come to our notice that some offices in the State Capital which have resumed their operations and asked their staff to come to their workplaces are not strictly implementing and monitoring the State Government’s COVID guidelines issued for workplaces.

Hence, to avoid any further spike in covid cases and to avert the possible third wave, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) Commissioner, Sanjay Kumar Singh urged the authorities of all offices and organizations in the city to cautious and watchful as covid cases are still getting reported in the city.

“It will be very important to ensure compliance of the guidelines and to strictly enforce COVID-appropriate behaviour, such as wearing masks and hygiene and social distancing by the employees of every organization during the working hours.

“I would, therefore, urge all offices, both private, state government and central government organisations and other stakeholders to take necessary measures for creating awareness among their staff to follow COVID-appropriate behaviour and simultaneously take necessary action for its strict enforcement to contain the spread of the virus and overcome the pandemic,” said Singh.

From Monday, the Enforcement team of BMC along with police will make surprise visits to workplaces in the city to check whether COVID-appropriate behavior is followed or not within the premises.

If any organization is found violating the guidelines, stringent action will be taken as per the provisions of Section 2 (1) of the Epidemic Disease Act.

If any offices or organizations are found flouting the norms repeatedly, BMC may even seal those organizations for indefinite period.

Notably, as part of its plan to relax lockdown norms in a graded manner, the Odisha government has asked all of its departments and subordinate offices to function with the full strength of employees from Monday.

Further, all Government offices and employees have been asked to take precautionary measures to prevent the spread of Covid infection.

In case of detection of Covid infection cases in any office, the protocol issued by the GA&PG department shall be followed and be reported to the concerned head of the office.