Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka of the Karnataka High Court on Tuesday requested the Advocate-General to take up with the State government the issue of scarcity of thermal sensors, sanitisers, surgical gloves, and face masks in the market while pointing out the difficulty faced by the court in procuring some of these products.
The Chief Justice told Additional Advocate General (AAG) Dhyan Chinnappa to inform the A-G that the staff of the State’s Health Department found it difficult to procure thermal sensors and they could gather only five sensors by around 10 a.m. on Tuesday for checking temperature of visitors and staff of the court.
We were told the the thermal sensors are not available easily now as they were being imported from China earlier and now it requires to be imported from Taiwan, the Chief Justice said, while pointing out that all judges of the High Court too went through the temperature screening process.
Some the court staff could not get thermal sensors and surgical gloves in medical shops and even online e-commerce portals too had no stock, he pointed out. On sanitisers, he said that the government should explore easy method to manufacture sanitisers locally.
The Chief Justice also indicated to the AAG that the court would take up the issue of non-availability of these essential products when it takes up hearing of a PIL petition related to COVID-19 on March 23.
