Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Thursdayurged Congress MPs from the state to pressurize the Centre to augment suppliesof Oxygen, tankers, vaccines, and vital medicines to help the state governmenteffectively fight the deadly second wave of the pandemic.
Exhorting the MPs to push the Government of India toenhance the state’s quota of Oxygen and dispatch additional tankers on priorityto enable lifting of the full allocated quota of 195 MT on daily basis, theChief Minister said Punjab was being meted out stepmotherly treatment by theCentre in the matter of supplies needed urgently to battle Covid.
Pointing out the chief minister said that BJP-ruledneighboring Haryana had got a bigger Oxygen quota and more tankers than Punjab.
Expressing concern over the issue, the MPs, from bothHouses promised to utilize their MPLAD funds to set up Oxygen generationplants in government hospitals, to complement the state government’s efforts intackling the exponential rise in patient load in Punjab, where a large numberof patients are also coming from neighboring states for treatment. Besidesshortage of Oxygen, tankers vaccines, and medicines, the state was facing issueseven on the ventilators front, since there was no BEL engineer to install 108of the 809 ventilators received from the Government of India, said the ChiefMinister.
Captain Amarinder told the MPs that despite the state’srepeated pleas and his personal letters to the Prime Minister and the HomeMinister for an increase in Oxygen quota for the state by 50 MT, the state wasstill struggling with insufficient Oxygen supply. The 195 MT quota allocated was inadequate forthe state to meet its present needs, and even that could not be completelylifted due to shortage of tankers, he noted, adding that the state wascurrently facing a backlot of 120 MT from nearby sources (Dehradun, Panipat,Roorkee). The situation, he said, was grim was the state was currently managingon a 12 hours supply cycle.
On the vaccination front, the MPs expressed concern overthe low supplies and repeated delays from the Government of India. The ChiefMinister said the state government was continuously engaging with both, theCentral Government and the Serum Institute of India, to expedite availability.
The Centre’s apathy towards Punjab was also reflected inthe fact that many other states had been given more vials of Tocilizumab, whoseimport and distribution was controlled by GoI, said the Chief Minister. Thestate had sought 650 vials but was given only 200 in the initial stages, whichwere distributed to government and private hospitals, he added. Even Remdesivircontinued to be in short supply, as delivery of the 50000 vials allocated tothe state was extremely slow, he said.
The meeting also took serious note of the poor responseof central government institutions in the matter related to health and medicalinfrastructure in the state. In spite of repeated requests, GOI institutionssuch as IISER Mohali never gave support in Covid testing, said the ChiefMinister, adding that even AIIMS Bathinda, whose foundation stone was laid bythe Prime Minister over 5 years ago, has not been able to provide any criticalCovid care. PGI, which was set up as themain referral hospital for the region was mostly refusing to take patientsreferred from Punjab (even though walk-in patients are being taken), and waseven conducting fewer tests than Punjab colleges.
The MPs expressed concern over the Chief Minister’sdisclosure that genome sequence results had not been received for the past onemonth.
On the issue of phased reopening of shops from tomorrow,he told the MPs that DCs and SSPs had been asked to work out arrangements aftertaking stakeholders into confidence.
Those who attended the meeting included MP Amritsar GurjeetSingh Aujla, MP Patiala Preneet Kaur, MP Fatehgarh Sahib Dr. Amar Singh, MPKhadur Sahib Jasbir Singh Gill, MP Ludhiana Ravneet Singh Bittu, MP JalandharSantokh Singh Chaudhary, MP Sri Anandpur Sahib Manish Tewari, MP Faridkot Mohd.Sadique besides Members Rajya Sabha, Pratap Singh Bajwa and Shamsher SinghDullo and PPCC President Sunil Jakhar.