Consumer body seeks SMS-based booking for vaccination

August 04, 2021 12:22 am | Updated 12:22 am IST - Coimbatore

Citizens' Voice Coimbatore, a consumer welfare organisation, wants the government to introduce an SMS-based system for people to book slots for COVID-19 vaccination. This will help avoid large crowds at vaccination camps organised by the government, it said.

In an appeal to the Chief Minister and the Health Minister, the organisation said even people from rural areas could get their slots booked from their homes through this system.

According to the consumer body, a helpline centre or war room could be set up in every district to which people could send their Aadhaar number and area pincode for booking time slots. The helpline centre or war room could allot the slots for people at their nearest vaccination centre, based on the pincode and the availability of vaccine doses.

A call centre could also be set up in every district to help people who were not comfortable with the SMS system.

The call centre staff could initiate a system-generated booking and send the details of booking as SMS.

The government would not incur much capital and maintenance cost on these facilities, C.M. Jayaraman and V.A. Shanmugam, president and secretary of the consumer body, said in the appeal.

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