advertisement
For Jeevitha M, a resident of a slum in Tamil Nadu’s Chennai, working as Chennai Corporation’s fever surveyor or sector worker has become ‘the only means of survival’ during the pandemic. Jeevitha, a 21-year-old college student, had to take up the job after both her parents lost their jobs following the countrywide lockdown that was imposed in 2020.
In addition, the family had to pay her college fees and the school fees of two of her brothers.
Now, a typical day starts for Jeevitha at around 7.30 am. After finishing the morning meeting with district health officials, she starts vising the houses in ‘her area’ donning a double mask, gloves and shoes. She finishes the work at around 2.30 pm.
Since late April 2020, every day Jeevitha has been visiting around 150 houses to check residents for coronavirus symptoms including fever, cough, cold, and breathlessness. If a resident is found to have the symptoms, Jeevitha says, she would immediately arrange COVID test for them.
The purpose of fever surveying is to identify virus cases as early as possible and prevent the infection from spreading.
Mohammed Rashik, another college student in his 20s also had to take up the job of a fever surveyor after the coronavirus struck.
Hence, the B. Com (Corporate Secretary) final year student immediately took up fever surveying to support his family. “Initially, I was a little apprehensive of doing this job, but later when I started working, I got interested in it as we were helping people overcome their illnesses”.
Sripathy D, a 28-year-old resident of Srinivasapuram, a slum in Chennai was working at an NGO before the pandemic struck.
Even though the fever surveyor job pays Sripathy less than half of what he used to earn earlier and requires him to deal with dozens of virus cases on a daily basis, he was “forced” to take the job as he had to take care of his mother, wife and child.
Currently, Chennai Corporation employs close to 15,000 such surveyors. Surveyors are also being employed across Tamil Nadu. Meanwhile, this year, when the state started the vaccination process, all fever surveyors were vaccinated on priority, as they are frontline workers.
While the job of a fever-surveyor is fetching them enough money to run their families, the surveyors are constantly living in fear of losing the job.
Often, people visit private hospitals to get tested as they want to avoid the local surveyors. “If they turn positive, the information comes to the corporation database. When this happens, our higher officials hold us responsible for not surveying the area properly.” A couple of the surveyors have also been dismissed from work because of some minor mistakes they committed, Sripathy said.
The surveyors say that the work is also taking a toll on their physical and mental health. “There are many who do not cooperate. They scold us using filthy words. The patients’ relatives pick up fights with us. Several times, they even physically assault us,” a surveyor said.
The surveyors also want their jobs in the corporation to be regularised.
Rashik says, “As we have worked for close to two years now, it will be beneficial for us if the Chennai corporation gives us the first preference when there is an appropriate job opening”.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)