President Cyril Ramaphosa recently announced that field workers would be deployed on a huge scale to begin the process of screening South Africans for symptoms of the COVID-19 virus. Some citizens raised the question of how they will be able to differentiate between real field workers and potential scammers.
During an interview with Radio702, the Department of Health’s Deputy Director-General Dr Yogan Pillay said that field workers will have identification tags.
A dry-run of the screening process is already being carried out in parts of Gauteng province.
Dr Pillay has told South Africans that field workers will carry identification badges, wear uniform T-shirts and be required to carry their official ID documents.
All field workers will also be accompanied by police officers, to ensure there is no trouble between the community and field workers, and vice versa. Community leaders will also be informed of when the field workers will arrive to ensure all residents are aware that they will be visited.
According to Pillay, more than half of the field workers had already been brought on board after Tuesday, March 31.
“Gauteng has already started doing a dry run of what the testing would look like,” he said.
Field workers were deployed to Alexandra in Johannesburg, on Tuesday after the Department of Health discovered there was a positive case in the area.
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