The Madras High Court on Tuesday expressed its displeasure over the practice adopted by the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) of using tin sheets to block entries and exits to places where COVID-19 patients have been detected and subjected to home quarantine.
A Division Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and R. Hemalatha directed GCC Commissioner G. Prakash to appear before them through video conferencing on November 10 and explain the rationale behind blocking entrances to individual houses using tin sheets.
The judges wanted to know if there was a scientific basis behind such a course adopted by the Corporation and whether any of the guidelines issued by the Centre or the State government permit the use of tin sheets to block entrances.
Question of hygiene
The Bench also wanted the Corporation to explain whether facilities for institutional quarantine were being maintained hygienically. The interim orders were passed on a public interest litigation petition filed by advocate R. Priyanka.
She argued the case in person and complained to the court that her husband was forcibly taken to an unhygienic institutional quarantine facility by Corporation officials, though he was asymptomatic and could have been subjected to home quarantine.
Stating that they were living in a five-bedroom house, the petitioner accused the sanitary inspector of having ordered institutional quarantine on grounds that their house did not have two separate rooms or separate toilets, was in a slum area and had no cross ventilation.
She said the inspector filled the referral form mechanically, without even visiting her house. She alleged that her husband was treated disrespectfully by the Corporation officials on August 20 when his test results returned positive for COVID-19.
He was taken straight to an institutional quarantine facility because civic officials were interested in showing numbers at such facilities, so that the funds allocated by the Centre, for their maintenance, could be misappropriated, the litigant alleged.
On August 23, civic officials blocked the main door to her house with tin sheets. “The officials, instead of blocking our main gate, blocked our front door, making it impossible for us to come out in case of emergencies like fire and other health-related problems,” she added. Finding some force in her submissions, the senior judge in the Bench told the Corporation counsel to explain the amount of money spent on such tin sheets, whether contracts had been awarded to private firms and whether the sheets were being reused.
