Phulia, April 19: 380 families in a village located in Nadia’s Phulia have come together to explore own way to fight Covid. In an attempt to avoid the crowd in local markets, these families who live in Purba Natun Buincha School para, have formed a committee which has taken up the responsibility to meet the daily needs of each of them during the ongoing lockdown.
The sole objective is to ensure that nobody from the villager visits the local market to procure daily needs making himself vulnerable to contract the disease coming close to unknown carriers of the coronavirus.
With this objective, four persons of the committee, have been procuring the daily needs of the 380 families from the wholesale markets in the town on a rotational basis and supplying them every morning for the last three weeks
Every day at 10 am, the villagers come to the local primary school campus, where they stand in queue maintaining a safe distance to buy their daily needs like grocery, vegetables, egg, milk, and medicine at a cheaper rate, which has been made possible due to a fund developed by some financially stronger villagers to support their neighbors.
Sources said that on March 25, the family heads met at the primary school campus forgetting their political and other differences to decide unanimously to ensure physical distancing not allowing the residents to visit the market and crowded places.
The brain behind the initiative Joydeb Basak, a cotton-yarn trader. said, “To ensure that villagers do not mingle in the crowd in the market, the committee decided that four of its members on a regular basis procure the daily needs of all the families and sale them from the school ground. None other than the assigned four members will visit the market at all and even the trivial needs of the families will be supplied by the committee”.
“All realized the importance of the distancing and the possible fatality due to its violation. So all of us agreed to the decision and since then the committee has been supplying the daily needs to all. This committee will also help the families in case of any emergency medical need”, Basak added.
As a result, four members of the committee begun procuring items from early in the morning as per the requisition by the villagers and brings it to the school ground for sale. The villagers have been asked to come to procure their needs covering their face with a mask or any cloth.
Basak said, “We bring all sorts of vegetables, fruits, rice, lentils, wheat flour, egg, milk and all grocery items of daily domestic needs regularly and try our best to sale at a lesser price”.
“We are, however, avoiding selling fish and meat due to certain problems”, he further added.
Timber dealer Harekrishna Roy, another senior member of the committee said, “While we have so far supplied 7 quintals of rice free of cost among the villagers, we have been trying best to sell the vegetable and grocery items at a cheaper price than the market rate. Many of our neighbors have no earning since the lockdown. So in an attempt to help them, we have developed a fund with benevolent contributions of some villagers so that we can compensate the regular loss being incurred due to selling the items at a cheaper rate”, Roy added
A villager, who works as a weaver said, “The initiative has come as a great support to many like me. It has ensured our safety as a strong precaution and arranged our daily needs at a low price than the market rate”.
When apprised about the initiative, a senior officer of the Nadia district administration said, “This is a great instance of community awareness. Such initiative and awareness among people in other areas can be immensely helpful to combat Covid19”.