'Difficult to Manage Multiple Tasks Simultaneously'

Q: What are your COVID-19 related tasks?

CDPO: I am responsible for monitoring the quarantine centres, and staff working there. Everyone who is coming from outside is being kept in these centres for 14 days. In our district, ASHA workers are also going door-to-door to spread awareness. We have also been asked by the department to make a list of the beneficiaries and transfer money in their account for Take Home Ration.

Q: Are you encountering any challenges?

CDPO:  It is getting difficult to manage the preparation of beneficiary lists by frontline workers and simultaneously monitoring the quarantine centres. We are trying our best to do the jobs that we have been given but it is upsetting that, at a time when everyone has been asked to stay at home, we have to go out and work. 

Also, the government is only paying attention to this pandemic, no one is bothered about the crisis that is going on in the agricultural sector right now. 

Q: Have you observed shortages?

CDPO: We have not been provided masks or sanitisers yet.

The interview was conducted with a Child Development Project Officer (CDPO) in Purnea, Bihar in Hindi on 10 April 2020, and has been translated.