USA: Several cities struggling to maintain services as employees shortage arise
New Delhi: Amid rising coronavirus cases in the United States – many states and the cities in the country are struggling to maintain essential services. Thousands of police officers, firefighters, bus drivers, and other public employees across the United States are off the job.
Jason Evans, A spokesman of Fire and Rescue Department, Dallas said that “204 of the roughly 2,100 total employees of the city’s Fire and Rescue Department were in quarantine on Thursday, because of positive coronavirus tests – the most since the beginning of the pandemic.”
According to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority – New York said that “In New York City, on any given day this week, 21% of subway operators and conductors — about 1,300 people out of a workforce of 6,300 — have been absent from work -which attributes the jump in absenteeism to the virus. Service has been suspended on three of the system’s 22 subway lines and schedules reduced on many others.”
Los Angeles city officials on Thursday said that almost 300 firefighters were off duty because of the virus, the most the department had seen at any one time. As recently as mid-December, the figure was 24. The Los Angeles Police Department said it had 505 officers out as a result of the virus.
(_Vinayak Barot)
