State constitutes 8 teams to augment Covid management

Kolkata: The state government on Tuesday set up eight dedicated teams comprising senior IAS officers to augment the COVID-19 management system with an effective coordination.

At the same time, five senior most IAS officers are working as nodal officers for five districts - Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly, North and South 24-Parganas - with high prevalence of COVID-19 cases.

At present Home Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay is the nodal officer of Kolkata, Secretary of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and Textiles Department Rajesh Pandey is of Howrah, the Land Revenue Commissioner Manoj Pant and Additional Chief Secretary of Public Works Department (PWD) Naveen Prakash are nodal officers of North and South 24-Parganas

respectively. The IAS officer of 1991 batch, Pant, is also heading the COVID-19 Infrastructure Augmentation Team that will look into maintenance and upgradation of infrastructure.

It will also take care of the human resource issue in this connection.

The Safe Home Team will be led by managing director of National Health Mission Soumitra Mohan.

There will also be five to six doctors in the team.

KMC commissioner Binod Kumar has been entrusted with the crucial tasks of dead body disposal as he will lead the Dead Body Disposal and Cremation Team. The team for Teleservice including the COVID-19 helpline will be led by Secretary of the state Health department Sanjay Bansal and Additional Secretary of the same department, Subhanjan Das will be supervising the entire COVID-19 Management team.

Additional Chief Secretary of Agriculture department Sunil Gupta is heading the Data Management Team.

Health department's commissioner Mahua Banerjee will be monitoring the issues related to Covid warriors clubs.