by Syed Samreen
SRINAGAR: Slowly but surely, the people are getting into self-help mode in ‘breaking the chain”. A group of youth from Baramulla’s Sheikh-ul-Aalam Colony have pledged to keep the virus away. To ensure this they have got slightly innovative.
Under the leadership of Ishfaq Ahmad Dar, one of the Mohalla leaders, they have closed all entries to their locality and kept only one gate for all entries and exits. This gate is a sanitizing gate.
The whole idea is to sanitize anyone and everyone who enters or leaves the housing colony. A tight guard at the gate discourages strangers.
The only people who are let in are the residents. What is interesting, whoever enters the colony goes through a long fumigation tunnel innovated by Dar and his associate Muzaffar Nabi.
When someone enters the tunnel, the sensors get activated for fifteen seconds which leads to the electronic motor receiving the signal and showering the person with disinfectant solution.
“Handwashing wasn’t enough, so we thought of innovating this fumigation tunnel which would sanitize the person entering it from top to bottom,” Ishfaq said.
The tunnel is decorated with placards instructing people to carry on with the procedure of disinfecting themselves. “Please do not visit our colony, unnecessarily,” one instruction says.
The solution, stored in a large drum, is made up of components approved by a medical team. “We wanted to make sure that the disinfectant sprayed on our people was safe for them so we consulted a medical team to approve the components for us,” added Ishfaq.
The people belonging to the colony are content enough on this initiative of the youth. The whole idea is to keep the infection away from their surrounding as there are zero reported cases till now. “There is not any case in our locality and we are taking precautions to ensure that we stay as zero-Covid19 areas,” Ishfaq said.
The group has named the tunnel SSS (an acronym for Sensory Sanitizing System). Whenever the drum runs out of the solution, Irfan and his aide refill it and make sure everyone who enters and goes out is sanitized.
“The whole setup gets ready at around Rs 12000 and is extremely useful,” Ishfaq said.
The group behind the idea was liberally funded by the community for this initiative.
The innovation is part of the global desperation among thinking minds to contribute to minimizing the Covid-19 morbidity and the losses. The world is witnessing a massive surge in the innovations of different kinds, directly and indirectly, linked to the pandemic.
The Srinagar Municipal Corporation also resorted to the Jugaad innovation of the fumigation tunnels that are now visible outside of almost all the Srinagar hospitals. Later, the Jammu Municipal Corporation also followed the suit.
