Work continues amidst exam fever

Young fever surveillance workers with GCC help their families out of financial distress

Last month, P. Krithika’s honorarium received from the Greater Chennai Corporation for volunteering as fever surveillance worker took care of the deficit in her mother’s income. It meant a lot as her mother is the sole breadwinner of the family. The honorarium also helped the second-year undergraduate commerce student pay the monthly due for the loan she had borrowed from a women’s self-help group. “My father has got some ailments and hence not in a condition to work. Therefore, it was my mother who was managing the house. She worked as a maid in three houses and earned around ₹8,000. During the second wave of COVID-19, one of the households stopped engaging her and the other two insisted she get vaccinated to be able to continue with them. This entailed a noticeable loss in her monthly income and it is the honorarium that keeps us going,” says 19-year-old Krithika who is assigned Madhava Nagar Ward 173 in Raja Annamalaipuram. Likewise, two of her co-volunteers Joshua Samuel. J, and Gokula Krishnan. S , both doing their undergraduate studies in engineering and physiotherapy respectively, belong to the Ward 173 team and support their parents with the honorarium they receive.