SHO uses unorthodox ways to tackle COVID-19 crisis

New delhi: It was on March 25 when the DCP East started calling up several SHOs in his area to arrange for food for the migrants, whose numbers started to swell at the Delhi-UP border, the shortest response time was from Station House officer of Madhu Vihar police station Rajeev Kumar.

Within five minutes he was at the spot with more than 100 bread packets and many milk packets. When he noticed that the migrant workers did carry many toddlers with them, the next consignment to reach the spot was milk biscuits. Since that day, Madhu Vihar police station has been trying some unorthodox methods to deal with the 'hunger' of the deprived during the lockdown.

No lines or queues were formed in Madhu Vihar for food distribution. The reason lies in the fact that the SHO systematically collected the data of the poor and the needy in his area and arranged food accordingly. Nearly 1,500 food packets are distributed daily which feed close to 3,000 people.

"We didn't allow long queues to build up due to social distancing norms. Instead we got a list of all the needy and poor in our area with the number of family members. We streamlined it in such a way that only one member of the family stepped out to reach our team to collect the ration for the whole family," Rajeev Kumar, SHO Madhu Vihar said.

The next-in-line was the list of lactating mothers and the SHO was quick to realise that they had special needs. A list was prepared and the mothers were divided into two categories, with infants of 6 months and mothers with infants from 6 months to one year.

"We distributed lactogen 1 and 2 depending on the age of the infants to their mothers along with half litre milk in addition to the daily food to cater to the special requirements of the mothers," the officer said.

There were also instances when Rajeev Kumar defied the lockdown and got some hotels opened to meet the food requirements of the poor in the area. Also, some construction activities were also allowed to help the workers without any work.

Now, Madhu Vihar in East Delhi has become a model police station in Delhi which has effective measures to restrict COVID-19. It also has transparent plastic sheets which act as barriers between visitors and policemen.

The improvised system has compelled many other state police to contact Madhu Vihar police station to get some feedback to fight Coronavirus.