India’s Inclusive Fight Will Successfully Combat COVID-19, Says Union Minister Jitendra Singh

New Delhi, February 24: Union minister Jitendra Singh said on Wednesday that the coronavirus affected all spheres of life and brought about a paradigm shift in governance. India's successful commencement of the vaccination drive offers a lot of hope of a decisive victory against the pandemic in the coming months, Singh said during the valedictory address at the two-day India-Maldives workshop in New Delhi on 'Good Governance Practices in a Pandemic'.

The minister of state for personnel, public grievances and pensions said the roadmap ahead for both "our nations in winning the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic lies in restarting the economy, strengthening cooperative federalism with thrust on stronger institutions, stronger e-governance models, digitally empowered citizens and improved healthcare". COVID-19 Vaccination: Women Should Delay Pregnancy by At Least 2 Months After Being Vaccinated Against Coronavirus, Say Experts.

India's universally-inclusive fight against COVID-19 will successfully combat the pandemic, Singh added. He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reiterated and emphasised the deep and abiding commitment of the government to help its neighbours with delivery of vaccines to successfully combat the pandemic.

As part of the India-Maldives memorandum of understanding signed during Modi's visit to Male in June 2019, India is committed to capacity building of 1,000 Maldivian civil servants at the National Centre for Good Governance (NCGG) over a period of five years.

By March 2020, six rounds of capacity-building programmes have been conducted by the NCGG and 130 Maldivian civil servants have visited India. Singh said the workshop was an effort to showcase and learn from mutual experiences of how the two nations had handled the pandemic.

It has conducted sessions on leadership and motivation, especially with focus on the difficult working environments of the pandemic to health and education in both the nations.

There has been focus on jobs, skills and tourism during the pandemic, interpersonal skills and communication skills, digital practices and handling of public grievances and problem analysis and decision-making.

The effort has been to give an overall exposure to Maldivian civil servants of the Indian experience and provide Indian institutions with insights into the challenges faced by the Maldivian side so as to enable experience sharing for improving public efficiency, the minister said.

Maldives Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid thanked India for organising the workshop between the Civil Services Commission of the Maldives and the NCGG, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances.

The workshop, in which over 1,000 officers from the island nation are participating, is being organised days after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar concluded his visit to Maldives.

Jaishankar had reaffirmed India's commitment to security and signed a USD 50-million defence line of credit agreement with the strategically-vital Indian Ocean island nation to boost its maritime capabilities.

Jaishankar, during his recently-concluded two-visit to the Maldives, handed over 100,000 additional doses of COVID-19 vaccine to the Foreign Minister and Health Minister Kerafa Naseem.

It will provide a platform for information exchange and knowledge dissemination, according to a statement by the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions.

Day one saw a day-long academic exercise encompassing issues like leadership, health and education sector and tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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