Our Correspondent
Mokokchung, April 16 (EMN): The ambulance owners and drivers of Mokokchung district decided not to attend to any suspected Covid-19 cases unless the drivers are provided with protective kits.
In a letter addressed to the deputy commissioner of Mokokchung, they stated that the authorities concerned is yet to provide them with any personal protection equipment.
According to one of the ambulance owners, a preparedness exercise on Covid-19 pandemic with ‘private ambulance owners’ in the district was conducted in March. Currently, Mokokchung has seven private ambulances.
“As announced by the central government to provide insurance policy to all medical staff, security personnel and person involved in the fight for Covid-19 pandemic, we the private ambulance drivers, earmarked by the authority concerned of Mokokchung district to serve in this time, would like to know in which status we fit in?” they stated in the letter.
They also expressed displeasure at the district authorities’ failure to provide food and drinking water to two ambulance drivers, who have been kept in quarantine facility since April 14 after they had ferried patients.
According to them, the authorities had started providing food only from the evening of April 16. Until then, the drivers’ respective families had been providing them with food as well as drinking water, they said.