Vijayawada: The state government will allow APSRTC to resume its intra/inter-state operations soon.
Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy held a meeting with ministers and senior officials here on Monday and reviewed the situation with relations to Covid-19, out-of-state and daily wage labourers, and the lockdown.
The CM directed that modalities be worked out to begin operating the state’s Road Transport Corporation services within the state and also to other states in order to resume services shortly.
Services will be resumed in a phased manner and only operate from bus stand to bus stand with no passenger being allowed to board in between.
All details pertaining to a passenger’s place of origin and destination, health status, contact number and other such details would be obtained so that passengers can be traced in case of any health issue related to Covid-19.
Passengers will need to wear face masks without fail and social distancing will be maintained in the buses by operating only at half-capacity.
APSRTC operations would begin once the transport of all labourers from other states stranded here to their home villages was completed.
Plans to bring back people from AP stranded in metros such as Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai were also discussed at the meeting. The meeting also discussed allowing private travel agencies to operate their buses intra/inter-state.
To help contain the spread of Covid-19, the CM instructed officials to make people more aware of the importance of disclosing their health status voluntarily, and to dispel people’s tension and fear of getting infected so that they would come forward to seek health care.
He called for setting up village/ward level health clinics to provide health care to local residents and instructed officials to look for land to set them up and complete the process of setting up ward clinics by next March. Such clinics would serve people living in the jurisdiction of rural and urban local bodies, he said.
The CM congratulated officials on their handling of out-of- state workers walking to their home states hundreds of miles away. He said that the state government had taken all the necessary measures to come to their rescue on humanitarian grounds and directed officials to take care of all such stranded workers.
The meeting also discussed the implementation of the new directions issued by the Union ministry of home affairs on extending the lockdown till the end of the month.
Two passengers are to be allowed in a car and 20 passengers in a bus. Five persons are allowed into a shop at a time and 50 people could be present at a marriage. Restaurants could start take away food following social distancing norms. All shops could be open from 7.00 am to 7.00 pm and movement of people would be restricted from 7.00 pm to 5.00 am.
All employees would attend work at government departments.
