Mendes PDTT: 40,000 Villages Form Volunteer Movement Against COVID-19

JAKARTA - Minister of Villages, Disadvantaged Areas and Transmigration (Mendes PDTT) Abdul Halim Iskandar explained that as many as 40 thousand villages are ready to face the COVID-19 pandemic by forming Village Volunteers to Fight COVID-19.

The formation of volunteers, said Halim, is in accordance with the Village Ministerial Regulation (Permendes). Volunteers consisting of all components of strength in the village, the head of the RT / RW and the youth organization will be tasked with preventing the spread of the corona virus or COVID-19 in the village.

"Today there are 40 thousand villages or around 53 percent that have formed Village Volunteers against COVID-19. Of course these 40 thousand villages are still in process," Halim said in a press conference on the official BNPB YouTube account, Sunday, April 19.

Meanwhile, the other 47 percent of villages, he said, were in the process of forming the volunteer movement. During this process, the PDTT ministry is tasked with monitoring, evaluating, and monitoring so that the formation of volunteers can be carried out.

The volunteer against COVID-19, chaired by the village head, has several tasks, including monitoring the mobility of villagers, both those who are leaving the village or vice versa by forming village guard posts.

"This village guard post is very important in the context of monitoring village residents who leave as well as villagers from outside. In order to provide a sense of security that the village is under serious supervision," he said.

Halim added, there are already more than 8,400 villages that have formed village guard posts. This post is in charge of collecting data on travelers who have come from overseas during the corona virus pandemic.

In addition to monitoring and collecting data, these volunteers are tasked with preparing or establishing isolation rooms in the village. This is an important step because not all houses in the village qualify as independent isolation places.

Halim said, the number of isolation rooms for People Under Supervision (ODP) or travelers who have just returned to the village, already exist in 8,594 villages, with a total of 35 thousand beds. This isolation room is located in a school or village hall and is already in charge of handling tens of thousands of ODP.

"Of the 8,954 villages, 24,519 ODPs have been handled. This means that village activities are good for preparing themselves and heading to independent villages in handling and preventing COVID-19," said Halim.

"I am sure that if each village takes serious care, then the village scope will be finished. Then automatically, the accumulation of this small scope will have an impact on a wide scope such as the scope of the sub-district, regency, province, and of course national," he added.

Previously, until Sunday, April 19, the number of positive cases of COVID-19 in Indonesia continued to increase until it reached 6,575 patients with the recovery rate continuing to beat the number of those who died.

Currently, 686 patients have recovered after testing negative. Meanwhile, the number who died as a result of contracting this virus reached 582 people.

Meanwhile, the number of People Under Supervision (ODP) currently reaches 178 thousand people and Patients Under Supervision (PDP) who are waiting for the results of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) realtime test reach 15,646 people.