Dobong-gu Creates Safe Environment for 'School Reopening'

Special Disinfection Activities at Elementary, Middle, and High Schools and Surroundings... Inspection and Guidance of 126 Children's Favorite Food Preparation and Sales Establishments

[Asia Economy Reporter Jongil Park] Dobong-gu (Mayor Dongjin Lee) has taken steps to create a healthy and safe school environment to ensure that students can commute to and from school safely, as in-person classes at elementary, middle, and high schools began sequentially from the 20th of last month.

There are a total of 47 elementary, middle, high, and special schools in Dobong-gu. To ensure safe food for children, the district will conduct inspections of 126 children’s preferred food preparation and sales establishments from June 4 to June 10.

The district organized 16 parent food safety guardians into pairs to conduct inspections and guidance at food preparation and sales establishments near schools that children frequently visit, such as school stores, stationery shops, and snack bars.

The main inspection items include ▲whether expired products are being sold ▲whether hygiene management of cooking and sales facilities at business sites is properly maintained ▲compliance with sales prohibitions under the Special Act on Safety Management of Children’s Dietary Life, focusing on basic safety rules that business operators must follow.

In particular, this inspection will guide mask-wearing for restaurants and other cooking businesses to prevent and curb the spread of COVID-19.

Additionally, to ensure children’s safe commuting, on June 3, the district conducted a joint crackdown on illegal parking and stopping in front of the main gate of Changdong Elementary School together with the Dobong Police Station.

Recently, with laws like the Min-sik Act bringing more attention to the safety of children protection zones, from the end of June, children protection zones will be added to the areas subject to the illegal parking resident reporting system.

The resident reporting system allows residents to report illegal parking using a smartphone application. By registering two photos taken from the same angle with at least a one-minute interval, if conditions are met, a fine will be imposed on the vehicle.

The district plans to impose fines up to 90,000 KRW for illegal parking in children protection zones reported by residents starting August 3, after a promotion and guidance period from June 29 to August 2.

Moreover, to ensure children’s safe commuting, the district will continue to conduct illegal parking crackdowns and guidance at least twice a week, in addition to the Seoul special crackdown period (May 27 to June 12).

Furthermore, the Saemaeul Leaders Dobong-gu Council, a private nonprofit organization in Dobong-gu, has been conducting special disinfection activities around elementary, middle, and high schools in the area since May 18 to protect students from COVID-19.

The Saemaeul Leaders Dobong-gu Council (Chairman Lee-seon Hwang) disinfection volunteer team, consisting of about 50 residents divided into 10 groups, has conducted disinfection activities 12 times at school entrances, external classroom facilities, and nearby shopping districts such as Nu-won Elementary School and Changdong High School, with one group working each day.

The volunteer team arrives at schools from 6 a.m., earlier than the students, and performs focused disinfection along corridors, around restrooms, and on students’ commuting routes using portable compressed sprayers. Outdoor playgrounds are disinfected using automobile fogging methods, and frequently visited nearby shops (stationery stores, convenience stores) are also disinfected.

Since February, they have also conducted continuous disinfection activities to prevent community spread of COVID-19 by disinfecting areas with heavy foot traffic such as around stations and main road bus stops a total of 3,970 times. They announced plans to continue special disinfection targeting stationery stores, convenience stores, and snack bars around schools where student traffic is concentrated.

Along with this, the district conducted on-site inspections from May 29 to June 3 targeting 188 academies and study rooms with more than 10 users in the metropolitan area under strengthened COVID-19 prevention measures.

The district conducted on-site inspections to check whether users and managers comply with infectious disease prevention rules and issued strong recommendations for some non-compliance cases.

Additionally, to encourage prevention and curb the spread of COVID-19 during the inspections, the district distributed a total of 3,720 masks to the 188 academies and study rooms.

Dobong-gu Mayor Dongjin Lee stated, “With the sequential reopening of schools, we will do our best to ensure that children and adolescents can attend school safely and healthily, and that no safety blind spots occur in the district.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.