School teacher on mission to replace conventional taps with hand-free ones

Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, May 12

Amid rise in the number of Covid cases it is imperative to avoid touching taps at public places to drink water. A teacher of Government Senior Secondary School, Nigdhu, has come up with a novel initiative of ‘hand-free’ taps, which can be operated with foot. He has devised a simple system through which a foot pedal is attached to the tap with a wire that lifts the tap when the pedal is pressed and water can be had from the tap. 

Dinesh Chaudhary, a PGT (physical education), has kept the target of replacing 100 conventional taps at public places with the foot-operated ones. As of now, he has replaced one or two taps at Trauma Centre, Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College (KCGMC), old bus stand, new bus stand, Mini-Secretariat and a gurdwara in Chandigarh.

“Due to the scare of getting infected, people prefer to remain thirsty as they do not want to touch taps, so I thought of replacing these taps with foot-operated ones. I assemble these taps myself. I start replacing conventional tap with the permission of the authorities concerned,” said Chaudhary.

Nishant Kumar Yadav, Deputy Commissioner, appreciated his step and said the‘use-tap-with-foot’ model might help in reducing the spread of coronavirus. Almost a zero budget solution, this model will eliminate the need to touch a tap with hands.