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. Sandhu 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.