A group has advocated the issuance of “corona bonds” to raise money from the public to fight against Covid-19 in Meghalaya.

This was suggested to chief minister Conrad K. Sangma by the Meghalaya People’s Action Committee Against Covid-19 led by former chief minister D.D. Lapang.

Sending a slew of suggestions, the committee felt that the possibility of issuing the bonds could be looked into in order to raise money from the public.

The committee also suggested strengthening of the Covid-19 Task Force headed by health commissioner P. Sampath Kumar by including experts like scientists, doctors, economists, sociologists, legal experts, representatives of autonomous district councils and other fields.

It mooted that distribution of resources like personal protection equipment kits, sanitisers, medicines is done centrally with the red and orange zones getting priorities.

The committee suggested that another monitoring/oversight group should be set up to ensure proper implementation of guidelines, social distancing, management of isolation and treatment centres, supply of PPEs, medicines and their quality.

Following the model of successful states like Goa and others, the committee suggested that the state should be divided into red, orange and green zones to properly tackle the infection rate and to identify contact infection for proper testing.

On agriculture, it suggested that directions should be given to the Meghalaya Rural Bank and Meghalaya Cooperative Apex Bank to start sanctioning soft agricultural loans, and to explore possibility of waiving loans of farmers facing acute distress.

A minimum support price should also be announced, it felt.

Asking the government to cut down on non-essential spending, the committee suggested the use of District Mineral Funds for fighting against the pandemic as well as diversion of funds from the corpus meant for the National Games 2022.

Till date, Meghalaya has 11 active cases of Covid-19 while the first patient of the pandemic had passed away earlier this month.

All these cases have been traced to the first patient, and are concentrated in Shillong and another area in East Khasi Hills.

Meghalaya has allowed resumption of agricultural and MGNREGA activities, construction and quarrying works in many of the districts as measures to restart and revive the local economy.