DIMAPUR, JULY 11 (MExN): The Nagaland Voluntary Consumers’ Organisation (NVCO) has asked the Nagaland State Government not to make COVID-19 testing payable so soon.
It said this while acknowledging the contribution of the state government by spending crores of rupees to bring back home people stranded outside the state and with the hard work of the frontline workers almost all the returnees were handled successfully in the various government quarantine centres and COVID-19 hospitals.
“Now the situation is changing not so bad but it is not improving. Take the case of the State capital; besides the returnees, three to four cases of COVID positive were detected among the community,” the NVCO said. It said that in case of community spread, the same would happen more “amongst the weaker and poorer section who were not much aware of the SOP and by that time our citizens would even find it difficult to spend money for the test.”
While recognizing that the pandemic has affected the State Exchequer, the NVCO said that the danger of community spread is very real. It therefore appealed to the State Government to encourage citizens to get themselves tested instead of making the test payable.
