Nearly three weeks after the Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) announced that it has vaccinated 100 per cent of the eligible population with the first dose. COVID-19 Vaccine, the civic body has found that around 15 per cent of its employees who are frontline workers have not taken a single job yet.
In a meeting held a few days ago, Surat Commissioner BN Pani had directed the heads of all departments to check whether the people working in their respective departments have been partially or fully vaccinated.
Clerks were asked to prepare a report on the number of employees who took their first or second dose, and those who had not received vaccinations at all.
A copy of the report, accessed by Indian Expressshows that only 72.85 per cent of the SMC employees have been vaccinated with at least one dose. Out of a total of 21,106 eligible employees, 17,880 employees have taken the first dose, 15,376 have taken the second, while 3,226 employees have not taken a single dose. A total of 2,504 employees are yet to take the second dose.
“We have come to know that many of our employees who were suffering from certain diseases or were pregnant had refused to take the vaccine. We are working on those who are left behind,” said SMC deputy commissioner Kamlesh Naik.
Meanwhile, Surat Sudharai Kamdar (Staff) Mandal President Iqbal Sheikh said that the civic body has warned of a cut in the salary of those employees who have not yet been vaccinated. “We had met SMC commissioner Pani a few days back.
They told us that the third and fourth grade staff have not taken the vaccine. He said that if they do not take the vaccine, their salary will be cut. We told them that they should be given a month’s time to get vaccinated, failing which some punitive measures other than salary deduction could be taken.
On October 6, Pani tweeted that SMC had achieved 100% first dose vaccination for its eligible population. The data they then shared showed that as of October 5, the city had vaccinated 34.36 lakh of its 34.32 lakh eligible population with the first dose, thus a little over 100 per cent.
When asked about the difference being discovered now, Pani said, “We are going to find out the reasons given by each individual as to why they have not taken the vaccine. If we do not find their reasons right, we will take action against them. We have learned that the family doctors of many of our employees had advised them not to take the vaccine. We will also personally check the severity of their ailments.”
Covid-19 vaccination started on 16 January with frontline workers and vulnerable population in Surat city
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