Many NCR Units Forging Covid Safety Suits

BUSTED! As Corona cases rise, unauthorised factories are churning out unsafe personal protective equipment meant for frontliners

- Md. Hizbullah

As the coronavirus cases climb in the country, several fly-by-night operators have switched to manufacturing substandard Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in a brazen defiance of stringent guidelines for the safety gear, an India Today TV investigation has found.

The probed discovered how squalid workshops turned PPE factories overnight, their walls stained by half-chewed mouthfuls of paan spits, with half-naked men labouring on carrybag fabric to churn out so-called medical equipment.

Remember, health authorities have restricted PPE manufacturing to designated companies after they passed rigorous laboratory tests. The official supply chain is regularly monitored.

According to the Union Health Minister, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, the government identified some three dozen manufacturers across the country for PPE production.

They have been trained, their skills tested at our prestigious Coimbatore lab, he said in a recent interview.

But India Today TV's undercover investigation found how dilapidated tailoring units in and around the national capital have begun manufacturing PPEs.