Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Thursday urged Congress MPs in the state to pressure the Centre to augment supplies of oxygen, tankers, vaccines and vital medicines to help the state government fight the deadly second wave of the pandemic effectively.
Exhorting the MPs to push the Centre to enhance the state’s quota of oxygen and dispatch additional tankers on priority to enable lifting of the full allocated quota of 195 MT on daily basis, the Chief Minister claimed that Punjab was being given the stepmotherly treatment by the Centre regarding urgent Covid supplies and pointed out that the BJP-ruled neighbouring state of Haryana had received a bigger oxygen quota and more tankers.
Captain Amarinder also told MPs that despite the state’s repeated pleas and his personal letters to the Prime Minister and the Home Minister, the state was still struggling as the 195 MT quota allocated is inadequate to meet Punjab’s needs. The situation, he said, is grim as the state is managing on a 12-hour supply cycle.
Expressing concern over the issue, MPs from both Houses promised to utilise their MPLAD funds to set up oxygen generation plants in government hospitals.
The state is also facing problems because there is no BEL engineer to install 108 of the 809 ventilators received from the Government of India, said the Chief Minister.
On the vaccination front, the MPs expressed concern over low supplies and repeated delays from the Government of India.
The Centre’s apathy towards Punjab was also reflected in the fact that many other states had been given more vials of tocilizumab, whose import and distribution is controlled by GoI, said the Chief Minister. Even remdesivir continues to be in short supply, as delivery of the allocated 50,000 vials was extremely slow, he added.
The meeting also took serious note of the poor response of Central government institutions such as IISER Mohali and AIIMS Bathinda to matters like Covid testing and critical Covid care. The Chief Minister also disclosed that genome sequencing results had not been received for the past one month.