The Ministry of Home Affairs on Saturday reconstituted the eleven empowered groups of officers that had earlier been formed for planning and implementation of measures to curb the coronavirus outbreak in the country.
As per reports, eleven empowered groups of officers were first created under the Disaster Management Act on March 29, 2020.
However, the reconstitution was done as some members either retired, appointed or was transferred from their earlier posting.
An order for reconstituting the empowered groups was issued by Union home Secretary Ajay Bhalla on Friday, the spokesperson of MHA said.
“Empowered groups under Disaster Management Act, 2005, reconstituted for planning and ensuring implementation of COVID-19 activities,” the spokesperson added.
Their terms and conditions will remain the same, according to the order.
Each of the eleven empowered groups of officers has been assigned with the implementation of these eleven activities –medical emergency management plan, ensuring the availability of healthcare facilities for the care of COVID-19 patients, ensuring the availability of essential medical equipment, augmenting human resources and capacity building.
The other activities that had to be managed by the respective groups of officers include facilitating supply chain and logistics management for the availability of necessary items, coordinating with various organizations for response-related activities, taking care of economic and welfare measures, taking care of measures of spreading public awareness, technology and data management, addressing public grievances and overseeing strategic issues related to lockdown.