The Assam Government has set January 15 as the deadline to complete COVID-19 vaccination of all the eligible population, estimated at 2.1 crore.
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said about 95% of all above 18 years in Assam had received their first dose. Inoculation of the remaining 10 lakh was targeted to be completed by November 20.
The 10 lakh people were a “vaccine-resistant” population, many of them in the three hill districts of Central Assam, who were either not willing to take the jab or were senior citizens reluctant to go to vaccination centres, he told journalists while launching Project Sadbhavana on Friday. The project is a one-time initiative to dispose of all files — some dating back to the 1990s — across departments before the government migrates to a paperless system.
“We are targeting these 10 lakh people through a massive door-to-door vaccination drive for seven days,to be able to give them the first dose. The exercise will be on a scale larger than the first vaccination drive because it will need a great deal of motivating and convincing the people,” the Chief Minister said.
According to the State’s Health Department, 2,00,76,000 people have received the first COVID-19 dose while 77 lakh among them have received both doses.
“We aim to complete the vaccination of all our eligible people with both doses by January 15 next year,” he said, hoping that the third wave of the pandemic will not impact the people of Assam much once they are fully vaccinated.
On Project Sadbhavana, Mr. Sarma said it would help stop people from making several rounds of the Secretariat for their files to be cleared during the pandemic situation.
“An agency had recently undertaken an exercise to understand why 300-700 citizens come to the secretariat even during the pandemic situation. Disposing of their cases up to May 2021 under this initiative should spare them the trouble of making the rounds,” the Chief Minister said.
The Education department accounted for most of the pending cases at 27% followed by the Public Works Department (19%), Pension and Public Grievances (8%), Irrigation (5%) and Social Welfare (4%).
