Kejriwal addresses C-40 leaders, commits to contain COVID-19

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New Delhi, March 27 (IANS) Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday represented India and the national capital in a global meet organised by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, to discuss strategy to combat the coronavirus pandemic, saying the city cannot afford to lose a single life to COVID-19 or from starvation.

Kejriwal was joined by top leaders of several megacities from around the world, such as mayors of Los Angeles (Eric Garcetti), Seoul (Won-soon Park), Paris (Anne Hidalgo), Milan (Guiseppa Sala), Istanbul (Ekrem Imamoglu) and Rome (Virginia Raggi), Johannesburg (Geoff Makhubo), London (Sadiq Khan) and Madrid (Jos Luis MartAnez-Almeida), amongst 45 mayors who were present in the meet.

He said that Delhi aggressively pursued the policy of identifying contacts and isolating them through learning from the experiences of other countries.

"As a result, Delhi has less than 40 COVID-19 positive cases to date, after 25 days of when the first case was detected."

However, he said, "We are not complacent. We wish to limit any further local transmission and would like to avoid entering stage 3 of community transmission."

Kejriwal said therefore, the government has implemented a complete lockdown from March 23.

"The economic fallout of the lockdown has disproportionately impacted the city's poor, especially migrant workers from across the country who live in Delhi."

Counting the steps taken by the Delhi government towards the welfare of all sections of the society, the Chief Minister said that the government has already released a two months advance social security pension for widows, senior citizens and the specially-abled.

He added that the AAP government is paying the construction workers sustenance allowances of Rs 5,000.

"Our approach has been that we cannot afford to lose a single life to COVID-19 or starvation. This is a crisis of unprecedented scale and we are committed to learn and collaborate with leaders across the world. Together, we will win," the Chief Minister said.

--IANS

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