ABAM offers its facilities and food for returnees

Our Correspondent
Mokokchung, May 21 (EMN): The Ao Baptist Arogo Mungdang (ABAM), the apex body of Ao Baptist Churches, has announced that it will give its facilities at Impur to set up as quarantine centre and also to provide food for the returnees from outside the state. The announcement came a few days after the Chakhesang Baptist Church Council (CBCC) offered its complexes at Pfutsero to be used as quarantine centres.

Executive Secretary of ABAM, Rev. Dr. Mar Atsongchanger, said that the quarantine centre at Impur could accommodate 200 people, adding that the association has earmarked a budget of INR 17 lakh for running the quarantine centre, for which the churches have come forward to contribute towards the ABAM Covid-19 Relief Fund.

Atsongchanger said that the returnees, who come to Impur, must think that they are coming home, ‘for apart from providing food and lodging, we take this as an opportunity to extend love and care in practical towards humanity’.

He informed that ABAM will deliver 20-minute sermon in the morning and evening through PA system for spiritual guidance of the inmates in the quarantine centre. He added that for kitchen catering, the association has deputed Impur volunteers to take care.

Atsongchanger also asserted that ‘for more than 100 years we are in the service of the lord through Church but we should not be discouraged that we are not serving our saviour through church only because God’s presence is not only in church’. He urged the congregation not to stay ways from the Jehovah during this pandemic, saying that ‘His omnipresence is with us everywhere.’

When asked about stigmatisation against people returning from various parts of India, Atsongchanger said that “Nagaland citizens returning to their homes do not mean they are returning home after they are infected with the contagious virus but circumstance let them to return home, therefore, we must not discriminate nor treat them as untouchables.”

“If we do not receive them with an open heart, where will they go,” he asked.

He asserted that during such an extraordinary time, Churches should co-operate and follow the directives of the government to contain this highly contagious virus. He also disclosed that Kohima has approved Impur Hospital to be used as a General Hospital, however, they have currently two doctors and three nurses; more human resource would be needed once the facility is operational.