Chandigarh University comes-up with Special Serving Trolley to maintain social distancing
Chandigarh University “CU-AID” campaign kicks off in
Tricity; Staff and Management donates one day salary for COVID-19 crisis
Social Distancing is the key that would help India to stop
itself from entering into the third stage of community transmission and
recently the Union Government instructed States and UT’s to observe social
distancing while serving the poor. Underlining the importance of the call,
Chandigarh University Gharuan has designed a special serving trolley which is
being used by the volunteers of university to serve cooked meals twice a day to
the poor and needy in the villages of Mohali.
“One day I watched a news on television where some NGO was
distributing food to poor and suddenly there was big rush near the distribution
truck barely maintain any social distancing,” said Rakesh Kumar Negi, a
technical & maintenance supervisor at University, who is the brain behind
conceptualizing the design of the serving trolley. The scene disturbed me that
night and finally I decided to do something about it, he added. The next
morning, the technician designed the serving trolley which he made from a waste
cooler stand that was available in the university junkyard. “The trolley can
handle 30 kg of food at one time and is useful to maintain the necessary
precautions while distributing the food” added Negi.
Ever since the lockdown began, Chandigarh University has
been running a campaign “CU-AID” under which food is being distributed for the
poor, daily labour and needy in the nearby villages. Currently the university
community mess is preparing and distributing cooked meals for more than 2000
persons and it plans to extend the distribution to needy persons to Chandigarh
by next week.
“While the doctors and health workers are tireless efforts
in protecting the precious human lives, it is time for the engineers to come-up
with innovative ideas that can be used to develop products or technologies
which can be helpful in the pandemic crisis” said Satnam Singh Sandhu, Chancellor
Chandigarh University. Serving trolley designed by our staff member is one such
small step to help humanity while keeping in mind all the advisories issued by
the government, he added.
Chancellor CU further said that, “The staff and management
of Chandigarh University has constituted a campaign “CU-AID” under which funds
have been generated by the university staff as we have donated one day salary
for helping the poor and needy persons”. The funds are being used to run a
community kitchen which is preparing and distributing food, free hand
sanitizers and face masks. “We are also in the process of building a 100 bed
isolation ward facility at our university hostel which will be fully equipped
with all the medical facilities” added Chancellor.