City daughter, part of Kerala police team fighting Covid-19

Aishwarya Dongre is in action at one of the migrant camps at Trivandrum.

By Vikas Vaidya :

She leads some teams that do surprise vehicle check, foot patrolling, aerial surveillance, preventing migrants’ move to shift to their hometowns, resisting the gathering during fishing, route march with religious leaders. These are some of the measures that are being taken by police in Kerala that helped the health authorities to prevent spread of coronavirus. Nagpur’s son, daughters are doing wonderful work in the State. Aishwarya Dongre, an officer of Indian Police Service, now an Assistant Commissioner of Police is one such officer who hails from Nagpur, now posted at Trivandrum, made her city proud. Kerala was the most vulnerable as far as coronavirus cases are concerned. But the Government there took so many initiatives and the cases got reduced. In its efforts to bring down the cases, it is a major contribution registered by Nagpurians.

After Vijay Sakhare, a Nagpurian, Inspector General of Police who did policing at Kasargod, now Nagpur’s daughter Aishwarya Dongre too is endeavouring at Trivandrum and contributing to the Kerala’s success. While talking to ‘The Hitavada’ from Kerala Aishwarya Dongre said, “We work under Commissionerate where from all the instructions are issued to us. We dealt several issues through which we can prevent spread of coronavirus. For example, vehicle checking. Vehicles are checked at every point to prevent the unnecessary movers. Apart from routine checking points we came out with some surprising elements.” These surprising elements include the road vigil applications. People don’t expect vehicle checking at every point. Through road vigil applications police are able to track down the people moving unnecessarily.

The police team under Aishwarya Dongre is registering 40 cases daily. This initiative has brought change and now drastic reduction in unnecessary vehicular movement is being witnessed. “The check points are very narrow because of which only one vehicle can pass through at a time. District to district border check posts too are keeping strict vigil. There are byelanes where the bike patrolling, foot patrolling is being done. To make this patrolling job easy, we are conducting aerial surveillance. Aerial surveillance has helped us in covering larger area.” Another big issue is of migrants. Kerala police took all the aspects of this particular issue into consideration. “Through several contractors our police reached these labours. We appointed representatives State-wise. We are in constant touch with these migrants. They are kept in the camps where every basic amenity is being provided to them.

I personally visit migrant camps. We interact with them. Kerala Government has opened community kitchen. Idea of visiting camp is that we want to give them message whatever happens they should come to us. Our efforts did get success and we could be able to stop them from moving to their respective States,” elaborated Aishwarya Dongre. Trivandrum has another issue which is of coastal area where people gather in large number for fishing.

Police did barricading in that area. The people are given the token and only 20 people are allowed at a time who are supposed to go, do fishing and return. To do the whole job with an available manpower the duties to the policeman are given on rotation basis. “Every policeman is given different type of work and it gets changed after a week that makes them not feel monotonous. Corona can affect even police, and we are very much aware of it. We have ensured that nobody from police force would work without mask. One more thing we have done wherein we took help of religious heads who led our route march and appealed people to remain in homes, follow social distancing, don’t hide any information, etc.,” explained Aishwarya Dongre.