Maharashtra: Mumbai civic chief proposes unified command for MMR

As the Covid-19 cases in Mumbai and its suburbs hovered at 2-lakh level, a top official of the Maharashtra government proposed to set up a unified command centre for the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) to combat and control the deadly viral pandemic.

At a Covid-19 review meeting presided over by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, Mumbai’s municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal mooted the idea of unified command centre for MMR, saying that it would ensure better coordination among various agencies.

“We will also be able to manage the beds in a better way,” Chahal told the meeting.

However, the government is yet to respond to the proposal.

In the review meeting, all divisional commissioners, district collectors and municipal commissioners of the state were present

While in Mumbai, the total cases have crossed one lakh, in MMR it has reached the 2-lakh mark.

While Mumbai comprises two districts of Mumbai City and Mumbai suburban districts, the MMR includes these twin districts and parts of neighbouring Thane, Palghar and Raigad districts.

The MMR is spread over 6,355 sq km— almost 10 times the size of Mumbai, whose area is 603 sq km. The population of MMR is over two crore.

The MMR has nine municipal corporations, nine municipal councils and over 1,000 villages. This includes the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), for which the budget and deposits is more than some smaller states.

The eight other corporations are Thane, Navi Mumbai, Kalyan-Dombivali, Ulhasnagar and Mira-Bhayandar and Bhiwandi-Nizampur (in Thane district), Panvel in Raigad district and Vasai-Virar in Palghar district.

After Mumbai, the Thane district is the worst-affected with over 70,000 cases.

The BMC’s successful strategy of 4 Ts— tracking, tracking, testing and treating— is being adopted in many places including Thane. “Several places this strategy is being used,” said Mumbai mayor Kishori Pednekar.

According to sources, bringing the MMR’s Covid-19 fight under one umbrella will help manage things better— testing, allocation of beds, ambulances and so on.

Also, similar protocols of asymptomatic patients could be adopted.

“Technically speaking, Mumbai-MMR is the same. Mumbai is where you have the suburban train network as people commute daily to their workplaces,” officials said.

Health officers and experts noted that while the Mumbai strategies have started showing results there is a spurt in MMR.

“We need to have better coordination among the municipal corporations, councils, zilla parishad, gram panchayats,” they said, adding that the scope of sero surveillance tests could be expanded.