This college student is spreading awareness about COVID-19 among MGNREGA women workers in Rajasthan

Jaipur: COVID-19 is spreading at an alarming rate across the country. While the urban areas are the worst affected, the rural population is also at the receiving end of the virus. Most people in Rajasthan’s big cities such as Jaipur and Jodhpur are aware how the virus spreads and how to protect themselves with social distancing and other COVID-19 measures, but the awareness campaigns run by the central and rural government are hardly reaching the rural population, particularly labourers in Rajasthan. Most labourers don’t have social media or internet access.

A journalism student from Marwar area of the state took it upon himself to raise awareness about COVID-19 among MGNREGA workers. He has held hundreds of awareness meetings in rural areas, specifically in Jodhpur region, and is imparting social distancing and other COVID-19-related information to illiterate workers.

The student, Satyendra Singh Rajpurohit, told The PinkCity Post that most of these workers don’t understand Hindi, let alone English.

“They don’t use social media. Most families don’t have TVs and internet access. The central and state governments are running their awareness campaigns through internet, TV and newspapers, so these workers hardly knew anything about the virus and how deadly it can be,” said Rajpurohit.

To know about their condition, Rajpurohit visited the rural areas.

“I saw that the women workers of MGNREGA were not following the coronavirus guidelines. They sat under the shade of trees in flocks without masks,” he said.

After seeing this, he decided that he must do something to save the lives of these innocent women. So, he printed 5000 pamphlets and distributed them among the villagers.

“I held meeting with MGNREGA workers while following social distancing guidelines and tried to make them aware of the virus in the local Marwari language,” said Rajpurohit.

He urged the local administration to set up tents for MNREGA workers so that they could have lunch in the shade of tents with social distancing.  He mailed to the SDM Osian and the BDO Tinwari and demanded that tents must be arranged for the women workers.